JTamouiS anomeu. 



MARGARET OF ANGOULEME, 
QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 



TJie next volume in the Famous Women Series 

will be: 

Mrs. Siddons. By Mrs. Arthur Kennard. 

Already published: 

George Eliot. By Miss Blind. 
Emily Bronte. By Miss Robinson. 
George Sand. By Miss Thomas. 
Mary Lamb. By Mrs. Gilchrist. 
Margaret Fuller. By Julia Ward Howe. 
Maria Edgeworth. By Miss Zimmern. 
Elizabeth Fry. By Mrs. E. R. Pitman. 
The Countess of Albany. By Vernon Lee. 
Mary Wollstonecraft. By Mrs. E. R. Pennell. 
Harriet Martineau. By Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller. 
Rachel. By Mrs. Nina H. Kennard. 
Madame Roland. By Mathilde Blind. 
Susanna Wesley. By Eliza Clarke. 
Margaret of Angouleme. By Miss Robinson. 




V-.. 



MARGARET OF ANGOULEME, 



QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 



BY 



i^-' 



A. MARY F. ROBINSON. 



>j. 3 w ^ ^^ 



y ^ "^ 



WASHl^^G. 



BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1887. 






r\ 



TH£ LIBRARY 
or CONGRESS^ 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1886, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



University Press : 
John VVilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



The sixteenth century, that age of great wo- 
men, shows few more truly eminent than the 
sister of Francis I. Margaret of Angouleme, 
of Valois, and of France, Queen of Navarre, 
Duchess of Alengon and Berry, was a person 
of importance in many different ways. In 
poUtical influence she was, perhaps, excelled 
by Margaret of Austria, Catherine dei Medici, 
and Elizabeth of England ; and Elizabeth, if 
not more devoted, was at least more successful 
as a reformer of Religion. But the Queen of 
Navarre possessed many qualities foreign to 
these famous names. Of all the women of 
her age, Vittoria Colonna alone was her rival 
in literary attainments ; and in the rarer and 
more illustrious authority of personal grace 
and charm, she was unequalled save by Mary 
Queen of Scots, or the magical Diana of 
Poictiers. 



6 PREFACE. 

The student of character may find another 
interest in the sweet, dense, simple spirit of 
Margaret, — a comparatively trifling and unreal 
nature by the side of the vehement and auda- 
cious personages of her time, but which, none 
the less, directed them, influenced them, and 
checked their headlong course, in the same 
manner as the youthful character of Raphael 
maintained an unceasing authority over the 
wilder spirits of his school. 

It is in her influence that we must seek the 
prestige of the Queen of Navarre, and not in 
her faded literary laurels, or in a personality 
rather interesting than great. It was she who 
inspired the College of France ; it was she 
who protected and guaranteed the Renaissance 
in France from the ignorant rage of the Sor- 
bonne. She was, in Melanchthon's phrase, the 
Divinity of the great religious movement of 
her time, and the upholder of the mere natural 
rights of humanity in an age that only re- 
spected opinions. 

It is thus, as an organic part of the history 
of her time, as an influence, as an inspiring 
spirit, that I have tried to depict her, and not 
as a sequestered individual. The task is intri- 
cate and large, and the space given me to fill 



PREFACE. 7 

is very narrow. But, so far as it goes, this 
little sketch may perhaps be of some service 
in indicating the movements of the earlier 
French Renaissance. I have tried to make it, 
as far as possible, correct. I have, in most in- 
stances, sought my facts in the many published 
volumes of original documents rather than in 
any subsequent history ; and where I have given 
an unusual date, it is, I hope, most often be- 
cause recent research has disproved the earlier 
reading. 

Recent research, ever so commendably critical 
and untiring in France, has happily disproved 
many last-century scandals, and one revived not 
many years ago. M. Lutteroth, in a Review 
called " Le Semeur," and M. le Comte de la 
Ferriere, in his introduction to the " Account- 
Book of the Queen of Navarre," have, with 
others, satisfactorily proved that a certain com- 
promising letter, which tradition gave to the 
year 1521, must be dated as 1525, the year of 
Margaret's hurried flight from Spain ; in which 
circumstances, as will be seen, the construc- 
tion to be placed upon it involves no shade of 
censure. 

No doubt some confusion with the gay and 
brilliant Reine Margot, queen of many lovers, 



8 PREFACE. 

has been the origin of the unfounded scandals 
which haunt the memory of the earher Margaret ; 
for the younger princess was also Margaret of 
Valois and of France, also the wife of a Henry, 
King of Navarre. Moreover, Brantome wrote 
of our Heroine, " En fait de galanterie, elle en 
sgavoit plus que de son pain quotidien." But 
we must remember that in Brantome's eyes 
the sense of intrigue and of amours was by 
no means the only sense of galanterie, which 
signified indeed — as properly it still should do 
■ — rather gentility, courteous and magnanimous 
behavior, chivalry, and pleasing address. No 
phrase could be more suited to Margaret, the 
generous Egeria of two royal courts, the story- 
teller par excellence of her age, whose palace at 
Nerac assumed the double aspect of an asy- 
lum for persecuted scholars and a refined and 
spiritual Court of Love. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter 
I. 

II. 



III. 

IV. 
- V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 
X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 



Childhood and Marriage (1491-1515) 
The Young King and his Rivals 

(15x5-1520) 

The Affair of Meaux (1520-1523) 
Constable Bourbon (i 521 -1524) 

Sequels (i 524-1 525) 

The Captivity (1525) .... 
Queen of Navarre (1.525-1530) 

Nerac in 1530 

The Sorbonne (1529-1535) . . 
Changes (i 536-1 538) .... 
A False Step (i 539-1 540) . . 
The League with Soliman (1541-1543) 
The " Heptameron." — I. (1544) 
The "Heptameron." — II. (1544) 
Downfall (i 544-1 545) .... 

Nerac in 1545 

Death of the King (i 545-1 547) 
The End (i 547-1 548) .... 



Page 
15 

29 

44 
64 
73 
83 
III 
124 

133 
156 
176 
189 
198 
227 
251 

275 
285 
297 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



I. Contemporary. 

Lettres de Marguerite d"* Angouleme. F. Genin. 
Nouvelles Lettres de Marguerite d^Angouleme. F. 

G^nin. 
Poesies et Correspondance Intitne de Franqois ler. 

Champolleon-Figeac. 
Lettres de Catherine de Medecis. De la Ferriere. 
Journal de Louise de Savoie. , 

Correspondance Frangaise de Jean Calvin. Crottet. 
Correspojtdance des Reformateurs . A. L. Hermin- 

jard. 
Livre de Depenses (1540-49) de Marguerite d^An- 

gouleme. De la Ferriere. 
L^ Heptajneron de la Reine de Navarre. Jacob. 
V Heptaineron de la Reine de Navarre. Le Roux 

de Lincy. 
Le Myrouer de VAme Pecker esse. 
Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses. 

Franck. 
Poesies de Clement Marot. D'Hericault. 



12 LIST OF AUTHORITIES, 

14. Poesies de Mellin de Saint Gellais. D'Hericault. 

15. Poesies d'' Etienne Jodelle. D'Hericault. 

16. QLuvres de Rabelais. Louis Barre. 

17. Relations des Ambassadeiirs Vhiitiens. Documents 

i7iedits. 

18. Negociations de la France dans le Levant. Docu- 

ments inedits. 

19. Melanges Historiques. Docuinenfs inedits. 

20. Captivite de Frangois ler. Documents i?iedits. 

21. Re'cit d''un Bourgeois de Marseille. 

ir- 22. Recit d''un Bourgeois de Paris. Lalanne. 

23. Fleura7tge: Histoire des Glioses Memorables. Petitot. 

24. La Trh-joyeuse Histoire du Chevalier Bayard. 

Petitot. 
, 25. Memoires de Messire Martin du Bellay. Petitot. 
" 26. Ogdoades de Messire Guillau77ie du Bellay. Petitot. 

27. Oraison Funebre de V incomparable Marguerite^ par 

Charles de Ste. Marthe. 

28. Histoire Ecclesiastique des Eglises Reformees. Baum 

et Cunitz. 
4^ 29. QLuvres de Bratitome. 

30. Vita di Benvenuto Cellini. 

31. H Histoire de VHeresie. Florimond de Remond. 

32. Histoire de Foix, Beam, et Navarre. Pierre 01- 

hagaray. 
12>' Histoire de Beam et de Navarre. Nicolas de 
Bordenave. 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 1 3 

34. Calendar of State Papers^ Vols. VIII. and IX. 

35. Relazione Venete, Vols. I., II., and IV. Alberi. 

36. Papiers d^^fat du Cardinal Granvelle. Documents 

inedits. Weiss. 

II. Critical and Historical. 

37. Histoire de France: Refori7te, Retiaissance. Mi- 

chelet. 

38. History of England^ Vols. I.-V. Froude. 

39. Rivalite entre Charles Quint et Francois \er. F. 

Mignet. 

40. Histoire de Francois ler, Vols. V., VI., and VII. 

F. Gaillard. 
History of England, Vols. IV. and V. Lingard. 
Captivite de Frangois ler. M. Rey. 
Le XVIhne Siecle et les Valois. De la Ferriere. 
Histoire de V etablissement du Protestaiitisme en 

France. L. Aguesse. 
The Renaissance in France. Mrs. Mark Pattison. 
Life of Marguerite d"* Angouleme. M. W. Freer. 
Marguerite d'' Angouleme et la Renaissance. Victor 

Luro. 

48. Marguerite de Navarre et la Reforme. H. A. Blind. 

49. Life of Bernard Palis sy. H. Morley. 

50. Histoire de France^ Vol. VIII. Henry Martin. 

51. Le Pantheisme Populaire au Moye?i-Age. Auguste 

Jundt. 



^ 



MARGARET OF ANGOULEME, 

QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 



CHAPTER I. 

(1491-1515.) 

CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 

When Louisa of Savoy, beautiful, accom- 
plished, barely fifteen years old, was given in 
marriage to Charles of Orleans, Count of An- 
gouleme, it can have seemed no brilliant alli- 
ance on her part. The bridegroom was twenty 
years older than the bride, of fallen fortunes, 
and banished from the Court of France. That 
he was a possible heir to the Crown can only 
have counted as a splendid piece of heraldry; 
for the young king, Charles VIII., was newly 
wedded to Anne of Brittany, and his sister's 
husband, the heir-presumptive, was a vigorous 
young man of nine-and-twenty, likely to live 
long and have many children. 



l6 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

These two young lives stood between the Crown 
and the Count of Angouleme. It was not Ukely 
that he, dehcate, gentle, fastidious, should out- 
live them. But the Count's position as a possi- 
ble heir made him an honorable match, though 
poor, for the girlish Princess of Savoy. Her 
father sanctioned the marriage gladly. Louisa's 
mother was dead, and he had children by his 
second wife. He was willing to marry his elder 
daughter honorably and without expense. On 
her marriage he gave with her a dowry of 3 5 ,000 
livres, — a small sum, considering that her mother 
had been a very wealthy heiress. But Philip of 
Savoy, with several children to endow, and a 
throne ever threatened by the surrounding king- 
doms, had many uses for his money. The Count 
of Angouleme, for his part, assigned the Castles 
of Cognac and Romorantin to Louisa, and these 
were to remain to her as dower-houses in the 
event of her widowhood. Finally, all affairs be- 
ing settled, Charles of Orleans, in the year 1491, 
was married to his youthful bride. 

The Count went with his wife to live on his 
property in Angouleme. From the French court 
he was debarred by the King's displeasure, for 
the reason that long ago he had joined the re- 
bellion of Brittany. It was no punishment to 
Charles to live a country life. His gentle and 



CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 1/ 

quiet tastes, his benevolence, his gift for organi- 
zation, all were employed , and satisfied in the 
orderly routine of managing a great property. 
He had his reward in peaceful years and in the 
loving devotion of his tenantry. But such a 
life might easily have wearied a beautiful child 
of fifteen, exceedingly accomplished, a princess, 
brilliant, and fond of power. There was, how- 
ever, in Louisa's nature a passionate capacity for 
devotion. This, in fact, is the key-note of her 
life. She fell in love, deeply and all sufficingly, 
with her courteous, elderly husband : the banish- 
ment in which he shone delighted her; the deli- 
cate chivalry of his character won her passionate 
approval. At this age she must have been a 
beautiful girl, with aquiline features, in which 
the latent coarseness was as yet undeveloped, 
dark, with an ardent Italian air. She knew a 
little Latin, and was fond of quoting it ; she was 
well and widely read in French, and could speak 
several modern languages ; there were few bet- 
ter instructed princesses in Europe. Her man- 
ners at this time were gentle and submissive, for 
she had voluntarily bowed herself under the 
yoke of an impassioned reverence. The violent 
ambition of her later years was still unguessed 
and latent in her soul. 

Charles and his bride spent the first year of 



1 8 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

their marriage in the Castle of Angouleme, and 
there, in the following spring, their eldest child 
was born. In the journal in which, later on, 
Louisa noted the great events of her life, she 
thus records the date : — 

" My daughter Margaret was born in the year 
1492, the nth day of April, at two o'clock in the 
morning ; that is to say, the tenth day, fourteen hours 
and ten minutes, counting after the fashion of the 
astronomers." 

As the little girl grew out of babyhood, peo- 
ple noticed that her mother's aquiline features 
were softened in her face by the look and smile 
of her gentle father, and that in her character 
his delicate and benevolent nature qualified the 
love of learning and capacity for devotion which 
her mother gave her. More intense than he, 
more refined and unworldly than Louisa, the 
little Margaret displayed a singular and beauti- 
ful personality. The young Countess was very 
proud of her and, almost from her cradle, began 
to cultivate the sensitive intelligence of the child. 
But while Margaret was still little more than a 
baby a more important personage appeared 
upon the scene, one who henceforth should be 
the very centre of existence both to Margaret 
and to her mother- 



CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 1 9 

" Francis, by the grace of God, King of France, and 
my pacific Csesar, took his first experience of earthly 
light at Cognac, about ten hours after noon, the 1 2th 
day of September, 1494." 

So triumphantly runs Louisa's journal. But 
the next entry sobers all that joy: "The ist 
day of January, 1496, I lost my husband." 

An intermittent fever, common and fatal in 
those days of imperfect drainage, carried off the 
Count of Angouleme at forty, and left Louisa a 
widow in her twentieth year. For some weeks 
it appeared as though her two little children 
might be left utterly desolate ; for, broken down 
with long nursing and a most bitter sorrow, the 
young Countess fell seriously ill. She was, how- 
ever, too young, too vigorous, to die of grief. 
She recovered, finding in her children sufficient 
motive for existence. Retiring to her dower- 
house of Romorantin, Louisa busied herself 
in training Margaret. This girl she intended 
to become the most accomplished princess of 
her age. Madame de Chatillon, a lady of great 
learning, rank, and virtue, was engaged as gov- 
erness to the young princess, and scholars of 
note were employed to instruct her in Latin, in 
philosophy, and in divinity. But if Louisa cared 
so well for her daughter, yet more absolutely 
was she engrossed by the future of her infant 



20 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

son. Her passionate heart, left empty by her 
husband's death, gave harbor to an unrestrained 
ambition, and her dreams began early to fulfil 
themselves. On the 6th of April, 1498, the young 
King died childless, and his childless brother- 
in-law, Louis, Duke of Orleans, succeeded him, 
under the title of Louis XII. These events made 
the little boy at Romorantin heir-presumptive 
to the throne of France. 

But Louis was anxious to leave a nearer heir. 
He divorced his faithful, ugly wife, the crippled 
daughter of Louis XI., and espoused Anne of 
Brittany, the beautiful Queen Dowager, whom 
he had desired to marry in his early youth. 
Anne and Louisa were implacable at heart. 
The stern little Breton Queen was as obstinate 
as the Countess, but far more sedate: deter- 
mined, ambitious, and secret. She had a great 
contempt for Louisa's violent aspirations ; a very 
rigid Catholic, she looked with misliking on the 
free speech and wide reading of the young 
Countess of Angouleme. But King Louis was 
resolved to be friends with his handsome cousin 
and her children. It was, indeed, to Louisa's 
Castle of Romorantin that Anne repaired to 
await her first confinement. With what strenu- 
ous prayer and hope, and with what humiliating 
fear, that event was awaited, only those can 



CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 21 

understand who have sounded the deep, inexo- 
rable rivahy between these two women. On the 
13th of October, 1499, the child was born. It 
was a daughter, — the Princess Claude of France. 
** Elle fut nee en ma maison," writes Louisa In 
her diary. From that moment she determined 
the little girl should marry her boy Francis, and 
not some powerful foreign prince who might 
forcibly break the Salic law. Naturally Anne 
was of a contrary opinion. 

The Queen was young, was of Louisa's own age, 
three-and-twenty. A son might be born to her to 
mock all Louisa's hopes and dreams. From this 
intense expectation neither one nor the other 
of these women was ever free. But the years 
went on, and no male child was given to Anne ; 
then, one crucial morning, a son was born ; but, 
writes Louisa in her journal, with an almost 
savage triumph, " he could not retard the exal- 
tation of my Caesar, for he had no life." Sharp 
anxiety and goading ambition had so changed 
by this time the gentle wife of Charles of 
Angouleme. 

Louisa brought up her son as befitted a king. 
Her Castle of Romorantin was scarcely large 
enough to hold the court and retinue of the 
young heir of France, and for this purpose the 
beautiful palace of Amboise was assigned to her 



22 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

by the King. As years went on, Louis grew to 
regard the young Count of Angouleme as his 
heir, and, despite the bitter jealousy of Queen 
Anne, he loved the boy, and treated him with 
care and kindness. He created Francis Duke 
of Valois ; he consulted the child's taste with 
fatherly foresight; and when his young cousin 
came to court, Louis had the royal park filled 
with deer and game, so that Francis might not 
be debarred from his favorite pleasure of the 
chase. 

Meanwhile, at Amboise, Francis was educated 
with the greatest nobles of France. Of these 
boy-companions, five, in especial, were to be- 
come conspicuous in the history of his life, — 
Gaston de Foix, the king's nephew, *' the thun- 
derbolt of Italy," as people learned to call him, 
who, ten years later, in the flower of his youth, 
should perish in the moment of victory on the 
desolate Ravenna marshes ; the light-hearted 
Bonnivet, Margaret's too daring lover, killed at 
Pavia; the brilliant and gay Philippe Prion, 
Sieur de Chabot, so often favored and disgraced 
by Francis in later years ; and, a more potent 
influence, Anne de Montmorency, the deter- 
mined, stern, narrow-hearted boy, on whom his 
godmother, the Breton Queen, seemed to have 
bestowed her pure and relentless nature with 



CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 23 

her name ; lastly, the unfortunate Charles de 
Montpensier, the Bourbon cadet, whose pas- 
sionate, vindictive character and tragic Italian 
face betrayed the Gonzaga adventurer that 
doubled this French noble. 

These boys were taught all things that befit 
young princes, — Latin, courtly languages, hunt- 
ing, the dance (music was as yet in embryo, a 
mere thrum of the lute or burr of the organ), 
jousting, tennis, tilting at the ring, fencing, and 
wrestling. At all their games there was one 
deeply interested looker-on, one whom all strove 
to please,' — the Queen of the little court; this 
was Mademoiselle d'Angouleme. 

At this time there was some talk of affiancing 
the little girl to the young Prince of Wales, 
afterwards Henry of England, eighth of the 
name. King Louis sent an embassy to the 
English court ; Henry VIL despatched a special 
envoy to Paris; but though the English ambas- 
sador reported the little Princess ** tres belle et 
fort saige de son aage," nothing came of these 
negotiations. For Henry declared that though 
a daughter of Louis would be the alliance 
nearest to his heart, yet while the King and 
Queen were still so young and vigorous he 
could not consider Mademoiselle d'Angouleme 
as sister to the heir of France. 



24 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Nevertheless, with every day Francis became 
more evidently the heir ; and at Plessis, on May 
22d, 1507, he married the little girl born at his 
mother's castle, in order to unite her inheritance 
of Brittany and Orleans with the crown. This 
was ample recognition ; and yet the triumph of 
Louisa was not all sweetness, for we find her 
writing in her journal : *' The 3d of August, 
1508, my son went from Amboise to live at 
court, and left me all alone." 

Within the year the little Charles of Spain 
sent an embassy to King Louis, requesting the 
hand of Mademoiselle d'Angouleme. This 
would have been a far more brilliant alliance 
than the English match, and Louisa would 
gladly have given her consent. But the King 
refused. Perhaps he thought it dangerous to 
wed a French princess with the natural rival of 
France ; very probably Anne, who still counted 
on Charles for some yet unborn daughter of 
her own, persuaded him not to break her heart 
and grant this second triumph to her rival. 
The heir of Spain was dismissed, and Queen 
Anne selected a very different bridegroom, more 
suitable in years, but not at all in spirit. This 
was Charles of Alen^on, first Prince of the 
Blood, a duke with power of life and death in 
his duchy, — almost a petty sovereign. He was 



CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE. 25 

a handsome, dull, inefficient youth of twenty, 
without ideas or presence, and of a brooding 
and jealous temper. There was, however, no 
ground for rejecting the choice of the Queen, 
eaeer to humiliate her insatiable rival. The 
Duke of Alengon was an honorable match for 
Mademoiselle d'Angouleme. Descended from 
that Charles I. of Valois who was made Count 
of Alengon by his brother Philip the Fair, Mon- 
sieur d'Alengon came of a house which for two 
centuries had been glorious and quasi-royal. 
And yet he was stupid and mean of spirit, — a 
sad mate for the gay, brilliant, mystical girl he 
was to marry, whose tender radiance and smile 
of wistful rapture deserved a happier destiny. 
It was also a profound disappointment to Louisa 
that, having refused the King of Spain, her 
pearl of princesses should be given to a simple 
duke. Yet this came to pass, — Margaret obe- 
diently suffering her dismal fate. So, for a while, 
mother and children were divided. Francis, 
living in impatient restraint at court; Louisa, 
filling her craving heart with infinite ambitions 
in her childless castle at Cognac ; Margaret, 
unhappy, dispirited, drooping in her husband's 
palace at Alengon, far from the gayety, the cul- 
tured interco^urse, the love and happiness to 
which she had been accustomed all her life. 



26 Af.lRGARET OF ANG0UL1>ME. 

Margaret was now seventeen years old. She 
was not beautiful, but ver\' charming. She was 
tall, graceful o{ carriage, slim and delicate in 
air. Her thick blond hair was hidden away 
luulcr a black coif; and this fashion gave a cer- 
tain severit)' to her long pale face. The eyes, 
blue and expressive, smiled sweetl)- under arch- 
ing brows. Her nose was the long, large nose 
of Francis, but more delicate and irregular in 
her, with a sort of ripple in it. She had a little, 
neatly rounded chin, and a ver\^ sweet mouth, 
with a wistful pathetic smile, well knowing the 
way " dire Nenny avec un doux sourire." Yet, 
despite her pensive countenance, she was — we 
have her word for it — " de moult joyeuse vie, 
quoiquc toutefois femme de bien." 

At Alen^on, alas ! there was no joyous life. 
The Duke, gloomy, jealous, mediocre, inter- 
ested merely in the details of his estate, was a 
respectable youth, but not the man to make a 
Margaret happy. She pursued lier studies as 
the one means of escape from this irksome ex- 
istence. Madame de Chatillon, her governess, 
had accompanied the young Duchess as first 
Lady of Honor. Under her direction, doubt- 
less, Margaret began to give more and more of 
her attention to her favorite study of Divinity. 
Her mystical, indefinite mind was attracted 



CHILDHOOD AND MARRIAGE, 27 

towards religious speculation, and Madame de 
Chatillon was well acquainted with the New Ideas 
then already beginning to stir the soul of France. 
This lady was in later years suspected of 
Luthcranism, and it was said that she had 
secretly married the innovating Cardinal du 
Bellay. But as yet Lutheranism did not exist. 
She and her pupil, however, had gone forth to 
seek it. 

Meanwhile Louisa was perplexed with more 
earthly anxieties. In 15 10 the nation became 
aware that a new heir might be expected to the 
Crown of France. These were months of exul- 
tation to Queen Anne, while Louisa understood 
how terribly all her ambitions would be over- 
thrown should a royal prince be born. In 
October a little girl came into the world, — Ma- 
dame Renee de France. Then for a moment the 
anxiety of Louisa was appeased. But a worse 
trial was in store. The Queen never recovered 
that disappointment. Three years afterwards 
she died ; and Louisa discovered that the death 
of her enemy had brought a new and terrible evil 
upon her. Nine months after the death of Anne, 
the King, who had mourned her with little less 
than frenzy, married Mary, the beautiful young 
sister of the English King. Louisa's hatred for 
this new rival and her contempt for the King 



28 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

are manifest even in the meagre lines of her 

diary : — 

"The 22d of September, King Louis XII., very old 
and feeble \fort antique et debile\ went out of Paris 
to meet his young wife Queen Mary. 

" The 9th of October was held the amorous wedding 
of Louis, King of France, and Mary of England. 

"The 3d day of November, 15 14, before eleven 
o'clock, I arrived at Paris, and the self-same day, with- 
out resting, I was advised to go and salute Queen 
Mary at St. Denis, and I left Paris at three o'clock 
with a great number of gentlemen. 

''The 5th of November, 15 14, Queen Mary was 
crowned at St. Denis, and the 6th day made her entry 
into Paris." 

Then the journal no longer chronicles the 
triumphs of a rival : — 

" The I St day of November, 15 15, my son was King 
of France." 



THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 29 



CHAPTER II. 

(1515-1520.) 

THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 

While the young Queen sat in her chamber, 
reading her missal, submitting to her mother- 
in-law, and embroidering red silken counter- 
panes, the Duchess of Alengon queened it over 
the court of France, the brilliant Egeria of half- 
a-dozen poets. For Claude, although the wife 
and daughter of a king, was none the less a 
quiet, narrow-chested girl, fifteen years old, 
gentle, pious, and awkward, with neat, pure 
features and smooth-braided hair that had no 
special charm or grace. Francis, with his ideas 
of splendor and chivalry, desired a different 
queen for his sumptuous court. And her he 
found in Margaret, a woman then of three-and- 
twenty, both learned and witty, and with a 
charm more attractive than beauty in her slen- 
der carriage and tender smile, — Margaret, young, 
" de moult joyeuse vie, et la meilleure com- 
pagnie possible." Margaret was virtually the 
Oueen of France, 



30 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Hers was a dangerous although an honorable 
position. She was young, and, under the spell 
of that sweet pale face, that abundant soft 
blond hair, her brother's courtiers called her 
the most beautiful of women. She was unhap- 
pily married, and possessed neither love nor 
esteem for her husband. She ruled without 
scruple the laxest court of Europe. Yet, sin- 
gular among the women of that court, the 
Duchess of Alengon never had a lover. 

The virtue of the young Princess, gay as she 
seemed, was quite secure. She looked on all 
her would-be lovers with a sweet, remote, iron- 
ical compassion, and turned away to seek her 
books again. She had an almost pedantic love 
of learning; theology, grammar, classics, ro- 
mances, — she gave them each a share of the 
curiosity and interest with w^hich she envisaged 
life. All these tastes and qualities helped to 
secure her virtue; but even greater than they 
as a safeguard we must place her absolute, 
unrivalled devotion to her brother. 

It was the fashion then at court for people of 
quality to select a motto or device expressing 
their personality. Duchess Margaret was clever 
at making these posies ; she supplied them to 
her brother, to his mistress, to half-a-dozen 
others. For herself, she selected a sunflower 



THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 3 1 

turning to the sun, and underneath she wrote, 
Noil inferiora secutus. The phrase is exact ; no 
lower hght did she ever follow, no wandering 
glory led her from the worship of that sun of 
hers. Through all history, I think, we never 
come again upon a devotion sustained so long 
and at so high a pitch as this of Margaret 
d'Angouleme for her brother. And this idolatry 
demanded many sacrifices. She was to offer it 
her life and her constant service, the interests of 
her husband, the happiness of her child. She 
offered it her judgment, almost her conscience. 
And for his sake,- in her middle age, already 
weary of the world, she should forsake the mys- 
tical meditation in which she delighted, to com- 
pose the '' Heptameron " to please him in his 
illness. 

Louisa of Savoy was scarcely less devoted. 
As great a love and ambition filled her heart, 
but was met and thwarted there by other pas- 
sions, by intenser personal cravings. She was 
not like Margaret, a sunflower, seeing only 
one object, turning only to that. She was a 
passionate, personal, violent woman, eager for 
love, eager for money, eager for power, yet 
subordinating these intense desires to her moth- 
erly ambition. Her passion was as strong as 
Margaret's devotion. Both these women lived 



32 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. \ 

\ 
\ 

only for the glory of Francis. Let us see of j 
what stuff this idol was made. ; 

There is, I believe, no good portrait of Francis | 
in his youthful manhood. The face so familian 
to us is of a later date, — a dreadful face, with its 1 
sly and carnal look, the long coarse nose and j 
full voluptuous mouth. It seems as if some 
pressure of blood on the brain weighed down 
the eyelids over those small and narrow eyes, 
and inflamed those florid cheeks, over which the 
coarse dark hair falls down. A dreadful face 
truly, — apoplectic, sensual, indifferent, cunning. 
But from the frequent contemporary represen- 
tations of the Field of the Cloth of Gold we can 
believe that in 1520 the King looked different 
from this. Still slender, tall, and elegant in 
figure, he rode his horse gracefully, and was first 
in every pastime. His long face, with the small 
eyes, is not yet swollen and reddened by indul- 
gence and disease. It has, indeed, a gentle 
benevolent, and royal expression ; an air of kind 
knightliness : and this is the pose which Francis 
affected. He was to be the Amadis of kings. 
He was brave to folly, ideally rash in love and 
in war; he was fantastically honorable. A story 
in the " Heptameron " relates how, having dis- 
covered in his court a stranger who had con- 
spired to murder him, Francis gave a great 



THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 33 

hunt, and, leading the traitor aside to a lonely 
glade, he offered to cross swords with him in 
fair fight, and then sent him pardoned away. 
Such stories as these captivated the popular 
imagination ; and the splendid court of Francis, 
his love of art, his taste in architecture, his con- 
siderable skill in poetry, — all this completed the 
national enchantment ; for France, notwithstand- 
ing her love of thrift, has ever demanded glory 
or magnificence from her rulers. Also the per- 
son of the King was widely known. His habit 
of traversing the country through and through, 
hunting, pleasuring, inspecting frontiers, made 
all men acquainted with their monarch. And 
the nation, delighted with his showy chivalry, 
found their Prince a picturesque object for 
devotion. 

But woe to those who expected more solid 
qualities from Francis. Fickle and variable as 
he was versatile, he veered from point to point 
with every wind. At bottom a profoundly in- 
different nature, he cared only for the conven- 
ience of the moment. He accepted devotion 
gracefully, but it did not occur to him to repay 
it. His confidence was the one reward he be- 
stowed on those who gave their lives to him ; 
and this went far with the women who adored 
him. It gave them an exquisite sense of par- 

3 



34 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

ticipation in his interests. He kept his grateful 
sister all her life travelling from province to 
province en coinmis-voyageiir de royaute. He 
left half the cares of his country to his mother. 
But woe to any who, in her hour of need, ex- 
pected to receive a like aid or service from the 
King. The Queen of Navarre never got her 
kingdom from him. Madame de Chateaubriand, 
in her dreadful prison guarded by her jealous 
and ferocious husband, was left to die without 
a word. A certain Louise de Crevecceur dis- 
covered too late the heartlessness of her lover. 
/ Do you not know," she writes, *' that those 
in prison make use of poison? My children and 
I eat nothing without I find an antidote for our 
food. It is for my love of you that they hurt 
me thus ; and you endure it. This is sharper 
to me than the pain that I suffer." How terrible 
a light this chance-found letter casts on the fig- 
ure of the gay, handsome, brave young Amadis 
who was at this time the hero of Europe. " It 
is for my love of you that they hurt me thus ; 
and you endure it ! " From many an honest 
servant of Francis this cry must have gone u]3, 
for neither gratitude nor pity beat under that 
dinted breastplate of his. Yet after all these 
years, knowing the end, and despite our great 
contempt, we feel the glamour that surrounds 



THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 35 

the figure of this ardent young poet and soldier, 
this brilliant hero of the Renaissance. And 
how much more did not his radiance blind the 
women who adored him as their hero and their 
king ! 

" Scrivere a Luisa di Savoia e come scrivere 
alia stessa Trinita." So wrote the witty, blas- 
phemous Cardinal Bibbiena. And it was true. 
Francis repaid the love and service of his wor- 
shippers by his confidence. Louisa and Mar- 
garet were scarcely less powerful than himself 
On all political questions he consulted these con- 
trasted minds, — the violent, autocratic Louisa, 
and Margaret the modest and humane. Uncon- 
sciously to themselves, these difiterent natures 
paralyzed each other ; and the policy of Francis 
is a brilliant tissue of inconsistencies, uncertain- 
ties, and sudden disasters. 

Francis, though so newly King of France, 
did not forget that by inheritance he was also, 
through his descent from Valentina Visconti, 
hereditary Duke of Milan. The Sforzas, the 
successful usurpers, claimed possession as nine 
points of the law, and Maximilian the Emperor 
demanded Milan by right of his over-lordship. 
Each was equally resolved to possess in that 
city the key of Italy. But these words, " Milan, 
Italy," meant more to Francis than a mere 



36 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

political position. To his intensely artistic tem- 
perament a corner of Italy was more precious 
than the whole of France. Milan to him meant 
beauty, poetry ; gardened villas in which to pass 
a soft abandoned leisure ; women more fair than 
those of his kingdom ; churches and palaces 
which he, the great builder, knew how to value ; 
lax and subtle Lombard art. From the first 
days to the last of his life the thought of Milan 
haunted him like a passion, and to the shadow 
of unpossessed Italy he constantly sacrificed his 
substantial realm of France. His first hazard 
ended in success, and made the name of the 
little town of Marignano a word to conjure with 
in France. No sooner was his reign begun, than 
with Lautrec and with Bayard, with the chivalry 
of France, the young King resolved to conquer 
his longed-for inheritance. He sent Bayard in 
advance with La Palice. No sooner did they 
set foot in Piedmont than they took prisoner 
Prospero Colonna, the general of the Swiss in 
the pay of Maximilian Sforza. When this news 
reached Francis, who was at Lyons with his 
mother, his sister, and his wife, nothing could 
restrain him from marching into Italy. He sent 
his wife, who was near her confinement, with 
Louisa and Margaret, to the familiar palace of 
Amboise. He left Louisa — " Madame " as she 



l^HE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 3/ 

was now styled — Regent of France, bade them 
farewell, and soon was in the mountains. He 
arrived in Lombardy in time to follow up the 
successes of Bayard and La Palice. The Swiss, 
rumored invincible, had gathered in large rein- 
forcements to defend Milan. Near Marignano 
the French under Francis encountered them. 
•* It was," says General Trivulzio, ^* a battle of 
giants. They fought all night.'* The proud 
mother writes in her journal: — 

** The 13th of September, which was Thursday, 
151 5, my son vanquished and defeated the Swiss near 
Milan ; the battle began at five hours after noon ; it 
lasted all the night and the morrow until eleven o'clock 
in the morning ; and this very day I left Amboise to 
go on foot to Nostre Dame des Fontaines, to com- 
mend to her that which I love more than myself It 
is my son, glorious and triumphant Caesar, subjugator 
of the Helvetians. 

"Sunday, the 14th of October, of the year 15 15, 
Maximilian, son of the late Louis Sforza, was besieged 
in the Castle of Milan by the French, and made a 
conditional surrender to my son. 

"The 14th of December, 1515, my son took the 
oath of peace with the King of Englan'd." 

Thus, a year after his accession, we find 
Francis a conqueror in Italy, at peace with the 



38 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Great Powers, adored and glorified in France; 
so begins his reign. 

There were in Europe at this time two other 
sovereigns, young and rich, though without 
the brilliant elegance of the French monarch. 
Europe lay, in fact, at the feet of these three 
youths, two of them caring for little else but war 
as a chivalrous game and peace as magnificent 
leisure ; while the third was equally uninspired 
by public spirit, being engrossed already with 
the dreams of a subtle and tremendous ambition. 

In 1 5 19 the old Emperor Maximilian died, 
and each of these three kings stood forward to 
contest the Empire. 

The eldest of them was Henry of England, 
eighth of the name. He was twenty-eight years 
of age, handsome, tall, blond, and ruddy. " His 
features," says Lodovico Falier, '* are not merely 
beautiful — they are angelic." Robust in figure, 
he did not yet show signs of the extravagant 
corpulence of his middle age. He was vigorous 
and active in all sports, vain, jealous, arrogant, 
but as yet the arrogance seemed only a bluff 
English sort of dignity. Handsome, rich, and 
valiant as he was, Henry had not much chance 
for the Empire. His kingdom was not a large 
enough state. " No one was on the side of the 
King of England," says Fleurange. 



THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS, 39 

The real rival of Francis was Charles of 
Austria, King of Spain. These two were rivals, 
not only for the Empire, but for Burgundy, for 
Milan, for Navarre, and for the Netherlands. 
They were nearly equal in power ; for while the 
domain of Charles was the vaster, that of Francis 
was more homogeneous and more compact. In 
temperament as different as in interests, each 
was born to be the antagonist of the other. 

Charles was the youngest of the three. Born 
in 1500, he was nineteen years old at the time 
of the death of his grandfather. In the previous 
year, on the decease of his mother's father, 
Ferdinand, he had succeeded to the crown of 
Spain ; for though his mother was recognized as 
Queen, she was unfit to govern. She was that 
poor mad Queen of Arragon who mourned so 
tragically the brutal Austrian husband who ill- 
used her. Charles was brought up far from the 
fantastic neighborhood of his mother. He and 
his sister were given into the care of his father's 
sister, the politic Margaret of Austria, who edu- 
cated them in the Netherlands, where she ruled 
as Maximilian's governor. But all her care and 
healthy influence could not prevent Charles from 
inheriting the sombre temperament of Juana. 
The man who, when Emperor of half the world, 
should turn monk and dwell in the Escurial, was 



40 MARGARET OF AA'GOUL^ME. 

as a boy without brilliance, without activity, 
without fire; a pale, taciturn, studious lad, he 
seemed no formidable rival. *' Un quidam cer- 
tain petit roi," said the French, and laughed in 
their sleeves. They did not notice his hungry 
eyes, his powerful chin ; they did not see the 
subtlety and power of combination which this 
pious, quiet lad inherited from Ferdinand and 
Isabel, — the rare outbursts of determined en- 
ergy which showed him the grandson of the 
fiery Max. Fie was, in truth, a most formidable 
adversary. 

So it appeared when, in 15 17, the three Kings, 
as candidates for the Empire, sent from France, 
from Spain, from England, their delegates to 
Frankfort. Says Fleurange : — 

" As many were for the King of France as for the 
Catholic King, but not one for the King of England. 
And the day came at last when the election must be 
made, when it was cried aloud in the great Church of 
Frankfort, ' Charles, Catholic King, elected Emperor ! ' 
And this being done gave great joy to those who wished 
well to the Catholic King, and great mourning to them 
who were for the King of France, and they were vexed 
and bewildered, for they had spent in vain the moneys 
they once had." 

Francis had lost the chance on which he had 
surely reckoned. He never forgave his rival. 



THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 41 

On the other hand, he looked for help and 
friendship to Henry of England. It was natural 
that the two defeated candidates should band 
themselves together against the winner. Francis 
was sincerely attracted to Henry. Friendship, 
no less than policy, counselled him to make 
this tall, vigorous, blond young Saxon his ally. 
But Henry, it would appear, had never much 
reliance on his brilliant neighbor. He had 
the inbred natural English mistrust of a French 
jackanapes, and in this special case it did as 
well as penetration. He was jealous of Francis's 
success in sport, in love, in war ; and while the 
French King thought he was winning Henry by 
his grace and his vivacity, he was really only 
fostering the blind antagonism of Henry, only 
feeding his jealousy, and his dislike to feel him- 
self inferior. Moreover, though it was certainly 
advantageous for France — always more or less 
at war with the Empire — to make a firm alli- 
ance with England, England could choose be- 
tween France and Austria; and England, with 
her laden ships sailing ever to and from the port 
of Antwerp, — commercial, industrious England 
might naturally choose the power which ruled 
the Netherlands. 

In the treaty of 15 15 between France and 
England there stood a clause providing that 



42 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

the two kings should meet each other in per- 
sonal interview at some place on the confines 
of their dominions, somewhere between French 
Ardres and English Calais. 

At last, in 1520, this friendly encounter was 
finally arranged. France and England half 
ruined their resources for each to shine once in 
the eyes of the other. During three weeks the 
jousting and revelling went on ; for three weeks 
Francis tried all his graces on his rival, hoping 
to win his trust, and gaining instead his deadly 
jealousy. The whole court of either country 
was present on the field, '' All clinquant, all 
in gold, like heathen gods." The two sad 
neglected queens encountered there, and there 
Henry met in the French camp Margaret's 
beautiful English maid of honor, the black-eyed, 
slim Anne Boleyn. There met two rivals no less 
potent than their masters, — Wolsey of Canter- 
bury, with his retinue of colossals, and Charles 
de Montpensier, Constable Bourbon, bearing in 
his hand the sword of France. Henry of Eng- 
land looked on the Constable, noted the tragic 
face, wedged like a knife in the hilt between the 
black masses of his hair, and said to Francis, 
" Were he my servant, I would cut off his head ! " 
Had Francis taken this advice, he had not paid 
too dear for the Field of the Cloth of Gold. 



THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS. 43 

But no end, none, did reward that vast ex- 
pense. Henry would give no promise of alli- 
ance ; and when the splendid camps were struck, 
and the French court were journeying home to 
Paris, Francis was overtaken by the news that 
Henry had gone to meet the Emperor at Wael. 
Without flourish or display the secret Charles 
had gained his ends. In a plain soldier's tent 
he arranged his business with England. Almost 
directly after, war was declared between France 
and the Empire, on the vexed questions of 
Milan and Navarre. England remained neutral 
for the nonce ; but it was reported that Henry 
would bring forward his claim to the crown of 
France when Charles invaded Burgundy. So 
in wars and rumors of wars ended the tourneys 
of the Field of Gold. 



44 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 



CHAPTER III. 
(1520-1523.) 

THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 

The useless magnificence of the Field of the 
Cloth of Gold had exhausted the treasury of 
France, while Charles, without wasting a sou, 
had obtained a practical interview with Henry. 
The Emperor was sure of, at least, the neutral- 
ity of England ; he was rich, and ready for war. 
Francis, on the other hand, had to borrow money 
from the Florentines, and had secured no aid 
from England. On the contrary, the whole of 
the North of France was seized by an intermit- 
tent panic ; in many a bank of clouds men saw 
an English fleet coming to lay waste and rav- 
age. And this open, unprotected, impoverished 
northern country was left without armies, almost 
without garrisons ; for all the scanty soldiery of 
France was drawn away to the south, to fight in 
Navarre and to defend imperilled Milan. 

War surprised Francis without men or money. 
The promised Florentine loan was never paid; 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 45 

nothing remained but to tax the suffering coun- 
try. Tax after tax was levied; unbeneficed 
priests were rated as laymen ; benefices were 
bought and sold; still money enough was not 
collected. Then the King took down the great 
silver grating, costing 6,700 marks, which Louis 
XI. had placed at the tomb of Saint Martin. 
Once this would have been loudly clamored 
against as sacrilege, but now men were too 
miserable to clamor. Or, if they murmured ; if 
they said strange things and dreamed strange 
dreams ; if, starved, afraid, abandoned, they made 
for their refuge a faith uncredited and unknown, 
their dim voices were not heard in the noisy 
clangor and splendor of sixteenth-century war- 
fare. 

For in the towns of Picardy and Normandy 
the quiet artisans looked and noticed, then pon- 
dered many things in their hearts, — the useless 
glory of the rich, the squalor of the poor, the 
corruption, simony, and vile immorality of the 
Church, death near, desertion present, the world 
bitter, vague, unreal. Over their looms the 
weavers bent and dreamed ; the smiths and ar- 
morers hammered strange thoughts into their 
iron ; the very clergy read new meanings in 
their missals. A great idea had stirred in the 
silent womb of the quiet, industrial, abandoned 



46 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

North of France, — a thought continually born, 
dead, born again into the world : God is all, the 
rest is nothing. Says the Bourgeois of Paris, — 

"In the year 1520 there arose in the duchy of 
Saxony, in Germany, a heretic doctor of theology 
named Martin Luther, who said many things against 
the power of the Pope . . . and wrote several books, 
which were printed and published through all the cities 
of Germany and throughout the kingdom of France 
. . . and in 1 5 2 1 there was a great famine, so that in 
Paris no corn and no bread were to be found in all 
the town for any price ; and throughout the land of 
Normandy a still greater famine and scarcity of corn 
and of bread, so that ten bushels of wheat sold for ten 
livres. . . . And it must be noted that the greater part 
of the town of Meaux was infected by the doctrines 
of Luther." 

Meaux was a town of weavers, a great indus- 
trial centre. Close enough to Paris to share the 
intellectual activity, the fever of speculation, 
which signalized Paris from the time of Duns 
Scotus to the time of Vatable, Meaux was yet 
aloof, apart; removed from the envies and 
glories of the court, from the hurry and busi- 
ness of the capital. It was a town of priests 
and weavers. From the episcopal palace there 
a mild elderly bishop swayed the quiet city. 
This man, Guillaume Brigonnet, a gentle, hu- 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 47 

mane, dreamy scholar, ex-man-of-the-world, gar- 
rulous and mystical, had gathered about him 
the most thoughtful of the French clergy. Un- 
der him Meaux remained a serene oasis among 
the spreading cupidity and corruption of the 
Church. The pious, the wise, the speculative 
spirits of France were attracted to that placid 
neighborhood ; the great Lefebvre d'Etaples, 
Gerard Roussel, Michel d'Arande, settled there. 
Then all at once this humane and idealistic 
clergy — this starved, fiery, mystical population 
of weavers and artisans — was seized with a sud- 
den panic : Charles was besieging Mezieres. 
Hunger, desertion, fearful ravage, hovered over 
all alike. The world was proved an impracti- 
cable, an intolerable place of trial. There was 
nothing to comfort men, saving to build a refuge 
unseen and secure, a land that no rude soldiery 
could trample under foot, a haven where all 
were welcome. The same spirit breathed upon 
clergy and populace. With interests already 
divorced from the material world (celibate and 
scholarly, underfed and sedentary visionaries), 
they threw themselves, heart and soul, upon the 
hope of God. In a few months the mysticism 
of Meaux was an organic and progressive move- 
ment. From the bishop to the lowest journey- 
man weaver, — in every class men spoke the same 



48 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Strange, dreamy words, foretold the same neces- 
sary purification, turned with the same energy to 
the new-discovered Scriptures, quoted ahke the 
wonderful commentaries of Lefebvre d'Etaples 
(15 12-1522) which began the great Reformation 
in Europe. 

Guillaume Brigonnet, Bishop of Meaux, a vague 
and holy nature, was not without the vanity of 
the mystic. A man of sincere sympathy, sincere 
emotions, his lack of precision in feeling and 
thinking condemned him to play an insincere 
part. He did not inquire of himself whether he 
really felt, to the same extent of daring and suf- 
fering, the intense faith that stirred the awakened 
clergy, the miserable populace of Meaux. He 
sympathized with them ; he was their bishop. 
It seemed right to him to stand in the front of 
their movement, to be their Man of God. So 
we find grouped below this gentle mediocre 
bishop, with his incomprehensible flow of mys- 
tical garrulity, men of ardent and incisive faith 
like Lefebvre d'Etaples and Gerard Roussel, 
Guillaume Farel, Michel d'Arande, — all the 
heroes of the French Reformation. For a long 
time Brigonnet de Meaux, who called these great 
men to shelter in his diocese, appeared a holier 
and wiser man than they. 

It was to this Man of God that the Duchess 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 49 

Margaret wrote when war and disaster suddenly 
confronted her with the problems of existence. 
She knew him, it would seem, only by repute ; 
but in sore distress of soul she sought his aid, 
as suffering women of old sought the help of a 
greater Reformer. Margaret's soul had been 
born in the trouble and sorrow with which she 
learned that her brother's kingdom was men- 
aced ; her brother's life in danger, his safety and 
honor trusted (O haunting, unspeakable terror !) 
to the shallow mediocrity of her own husband. 
For Charles of Alengon was to lead the van- 
guard of the war. The brilliant, accomplished, 
joyous young princess was suddenly made into 
something more than this. "' I must now med- 
dle with many things which may well make me 
afraid," so she writes to Brigonnet, craving from 
the unknown the sympathy, the aid, she could 
not find in the familiar. 

How should they guide her now, these Bour- 
bons and Bonnivets, wholly given to the world ; 
these poets and scholars, Marots and Budes, 
intent on Prosody and Grammar? No; her 
long studies in theology, her conversations with 
Madame de Chatillon, had taught her to look 
for other consolations. And she was sorely in 
need of help and friendship. This war, which 
heaped upon her so many fearful doubts and 

4 



50 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

troubles, took from her at the same moment all 
her support, — the brother she adored, the hus- 
band she had grown to regard with friendly 
acquiescence ; and, taking her kinsmen and ac- 
quaintance, took also the sweet companion of 
her early womanhood, the tender and spiritual 
Philiberta of Savoy, her mother's young half- 
sister. So, looking on the future with miserable 
eyes, aghast, sick at heart, Margaret wrote to 
the far-famed Man of Meaux, and begged him 
to send her, for comfort, his chaplain, the learned 

Michel d'Arande : — 

June, 1521. 

Monsieur de Meaux, — Knowing there is but one 
thing needful, I have recourse to you, to beseech you, 
in God's name, to deign by prayer to make yourself 
the means that He may please to lead M. d'Alengon 
according to His holy will. For by the King's com- 
mand M. d'Alengon departs as lieutenant-general of 
the army, which, I misdoubt me, will not return with- 
out war. And since peace and victory are in His 
hand, and thinking that you wish well not only to the 
public good of the kingdom but also to my husband 
and to me, I employ you in my affairs, and demand 
of you spiritual service ; for I must needs meddle with 
many things which well may make me afraid. And 
again, to-morrow my aunt of Nemours leaves us for 
Savoy. Wherefore I recommend her and myself to 
you, and pray you, if you think this a fit season, to 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 5 I 

let Master Michel depart on a journey hither ; it would 
be a consolation, which I only desire for the glory of 
God, leaving it to your discretion and to his. 

La toute vostre, 

Marguerite. 

Thus In this naive, earnest appeal for aid 
begins the strange correspondence of Brigonnet 
and Margaret, — a correspondence eight hun- 
dred pages long ; fantastic, mystical, bewilder- 
ing, beyond belief. It is difficult to comprehend 
the consolation which Margaret found in this 
interchange of metaphors. 

" I share my cake with you ! " she cries, tell- 
ing the good bishop of her trouble; and Bri- 
^onnet forthwith responds : *' Ah ! madame, 
understand that there is in this world a cake of 
tribulations for you to share with your useless 
son, made from scattered tares, ground in the 
mill of sorrow, kneaded with cold water in the 
trough of infidel and disobedient presumption, 
baked in the furnace of self-love, of which the 
eating has been a fig poisoning the architects 
and their posterity, until the unleavened meal 
has been put in the cask of human nature." 
And again, in answer to some appeal of hers he 
declares his own unworthiness in still more mys- 
tic and astounding fashion : *' Who is deserted. 



52 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

is abysmed in the desert; seeking the desert 
and not finding it; and, finding it, is yet the 
more bewildered ; and a poor guide is he to 
guide another out of the desert, and to lead 
another into the desert desired. The desert 
starves him with mortiferous hunger, although 
he be full to the eyes ; goading his desire but 
to satisfy it and impoverish it with poverty." 
Margaret at length is herself in fault This last 
message is too hard for her. She beseeches 
Brigonnet to speak more plainly in a letter which 
pathetically endeavors to copy his own extraor- • 
dinary style. *' Demetaphorize yourself," she 
entreats him. '' The poor wanderer cannot un- 
derstand the good which is in the desert, for 
lack of knowing that she is deserted. Prithee, 
for kindness' sake, run not so swiftly through 
the desert that she cannot follow you ... in 
order that the abyss invoked by the abyss may 
whelm in its abysm the poor wanderer Marga- 
ret." But Brigonnet cannot refrain from pur- 
suing so fructiferous a metaphor as that which 
the last sentence of the Duchess off'ers. He re- 
plies at once, without demetaphorizing: "The 
abyss which prevents all abysses, which in sav- 
ing from the abyss whelms in the abyss without 
whelming or spoiling \e7i le desabysmant Vabys- 
mer en Vabysme sans V abysmer\ , which abyss is 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 53 

the bottomless bottom of things, the way of the 
wanderers, without road or path," etc. 

In this galHmaufry of absurdities it is difficult 
to catch the allusion to the mystical love of 
God which absorbs all thought, feeling, envy, 
and leaves the soul absolutely devoid of per- 
sonal existence, the body quite without desire 
or sensation. This longed-for death-in-life is 
the bottomless bottom of things, and we com- 
prehend that a thought so unthinkable could not 
well be conveyed in precise and reasoned lan- 
guage. We remember that such mystical spec- 
ulation, couched in clear and logical terms (as 
in the writings of Master Eckhart), becomes 
merely Negation, or, at most. Agnosticism. And 
we are inclined to set aside Bri^onnet as a wor- 
thy dreamer, not quite sure of that he dreams. 
But on a more careful reading we begin to 
wonder if this involved and intricate style be 
not merely a means to set the suspicious off the 
scent of heresy and treason. " Blow with your 
breath often upon the* fire divine," writes Mar- 
garet to him; "set alight the wood that is still 
green." And he replies : '' The true fire which 
since long has been lodged in your heart, in 
that of the King and Madame, by grace the 
greatest and most abundant that I can conceive, 
I know not if this fire has been covered and 



54 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

slackened ; I will not say put out, for God in his 
goodness has not yet abandoned you. But ask 
you each in your heart if you have let the fire 
burn up according to the given grace. I fear 
you have procrastinated ; I fear you have de- 
ferred. . . . But I will pray Him to light such 
a fire in your hearts, to wound them and pierce 
with such unbearable love, that from you three 
may issue a flame, burning and setting alight the 
remainder of your realm." 

So we perceive behind this mask of metaphors 
a great and tangible effort, — the endeavor to 
convert the Royal Family of France to the new 
ideas, to the wish for Reform. Margaret, her- 
self an eager proselyte, throws herself ardently 
into the scheme. Her frequent letters to Bri- 
gonnet are chiefly concerned with this supreme 
topic. During the siege of Mezieres she brings 
her mother to Meaux, where they spent the 
winter; and on their departure Margaret does 
not relax her efforts. '' Madame has begun to 
read in the Holy Scriptures. You know the 
confidence that she and the King place in you." 
And Lefebvre^ writes to rejoice with her in the 
progress of the good work. " The King and 
Madame," writes Margaret, " are quite decided 
to let it be made known that the truth of God is 
no heresy." Indeed, at that time, when Protest- 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 55 

antism as a Church in revolt did not as yet 
exist, when Lutheranism was the most cultured 
fashion of the age, it appeared faintly possible 
that Francis, the Father of Letters, might be 
brought to favor the opinions professed by the 
most learned, the most intellectually brilliant 
scholars of Europe. But Margaret, in this mat- 
ter, did not understand the temper of Francis 
and of her mother. Lax and frivolous in regard 
to the spiritual importance of Catholicism, they 
believed it, none the less, a necessity of good 
conduct ; that vast hierarchy appeared to them 
as a temporal force in which all government and 
authority was rooted. Louisa and Francis were 
not of the pious. " I have canonized Francis de 
Paule — at least I paid the tax ! " cries Louisa; 
and she makes sport of a *' Fricassee of Ab- 
beys " which was served up on the death of a 
certain prelate. Neither she nor her son was in 
awe of the Church, of their faith, of their Deity 
even. But they had an immense reverence for 
the temporal authority of Rome. ^* Any other 
religion would prejudice my estate," says Fran- 
cis ; and in this opinion, adds Brantome, King 
Soliman perfectly agreed. This quoting of the 
Grand Turk, the Antichrist himself, as to the 
importance of the Catholic Church, proves ex- 
actly how much and for what reasons the Court 



56 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

of France respected it. Heresy as an opinion 
was perfectly in accord with the King's Hberal 
taste ; but heresy as an agent, as a factor, must 
be put down with fire and sword. Gradually 
Bri^onnet apprehended this fact; and being an 
excessively timid and hesitating nature, he bit- 
terly regretted having gone too far. In sore 
distress of mind he wrote to Margaret, — ■ this 
Brigonnet who had so sternly admonished her 
for procrastination, — *' Let it please yott to 
slacken the fire for some time. The wood you 
wish to burn is so green that it will put out the 
fire; and we counsel you (for several reasons, 
of which I hope to tell you the rest some day) 
to leave it alone, if you do not wish to quite 
extinguish both the brand as well as the surplus 
which desires to burn and to enfiame others." 
But Margaret was too deeply in earnest to hesi- 
tate ; she never had learned to be afraid. Her 
sanguine temperament had no doubt of suc- 
cess, and she seemed in a fair way to succeed. 
Madame had read Saint Paul, from curiosity and 
for amusement; her daughter already made sure 
of her conversion. " My sister-in-law, my dear 
sister, is quite of our opinion," she writes to 
Brigonnet. This may have been Madame de 
Vendome (the other grandmother of Henri IV.), 
but I am inclined to believe that Margaret^?* 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 57 

found her first convert in the good, stolid, gen- 
tle Queen Claude. Such success was followed 
up, for Margaret did not heed her correspon- 
dent's timid expostulations. The misery of the 
time, the ever-increasing disasters, inclined all 
minds to religious enthusiasm. Milan was lost 
as easily as gained; Navarre, conquered in a 
fortnight, was taken from the King as quickly ; 
Charles was laying siege to Mezi^res ; Henry 
was expected at Calais ; enemies were all round, 
and hunger in the midst. 

Among such conditions the movement spread 
and grew. In her intrepid faith Margaret con- 
ceived the reformation of the entire duchies of 
Alengon and Berry. But she found difficulties 
in her path. The secrecy that must needs be 
kept, the lack of adequate helpers, the dense- 
ness of the people, — all retarded the work 
which she considered la sahU des dines (" the 
salvation of souls.") She writes to Brigonnet 
in September, 1522, complaining that Michel 
d'Arande had had to leave too soon : '' Have 
pity on the country where he had promised to 
stay for some time, and which is so deprived of 
men of his kind that (to subsidize my duty left 
undone neither through absence nor negligence) 
I had prayed him to succor the poor sheep 
there. . . . The surety of the porter and some 



58 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

little cowardice of soul prevent me from writing 
more." A worse trouble soon came, in the 
declared enmity of the Archbishop of Bourges. 
Margaret possessed absolute temporal control 
in the duchy of Berry, given her by Francis 
in 15 17; she administered justice there even 
as in Alengon. But she was powerless against 
the Church. And now the Archbishop of 
Bourges threatened Michel d'Arande with im- 
prisonment for life, interdicted him the pulpit, 
and fulminated excommunication against his 
hearers. 

For the Church, at first amused, careless, 
curious, became alarmed and angry at the ex- 
tent of this heresy. The Diet of Worms (1521) 
signalized the importance of Luther; and the 
orthodox French party, the clericals, the Sor- 
bonne or Faculty of Theology, became aware 
that they, too, had a nest of Lutherans in their 
midst. There was talk of burning and of brand- 
ling. A formal censure of the new ideas was 
pronounced by the Sorbonne : " One should 
employ rather flames than arguments against 
the arrogance of Luther," ran the text; and 
before the Church of Notre Dame de Paris the 
writings of Luther were burned to ashes, as a 
warning to his followers. The propositions of 
Luther were condemned one by one; and none 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 59 

more heartily than that which maintained that 
the burning of heretics was contrary to the 
teaching of the gospel. Lefebvre d'Etaples was 
threatened with the stake. Then a descent 
was made upon the town of Meaux, well known 
as the headquarters of the new ideas. Farel, 
Mazurier, Lefebvre, and many others were 
obliged to flee for their lives ; others were made 
prisoners in the dungeons of the Sorbonne. 
And now a terrible choice was left for the 
gentle, cultured, timid Brigonnet. His turn 
would assuredly come next. He trembled, — 
this prophet who had in him something of the 
mystic's insincerity, and all the sensitive versa- 
tility of the dilettante. In face of exile, cap- 
tivity, torture, the stake, his presence of mind 
utterly failed him, and the Man of God was 
found, after all, a weak, temporizing, amiable 
ecclesiastic. For the sake of a theory he could 
not betray his order, sacrifice his liberty, his 
life. So, on the 15th of October, 1523, he is- 
sued a decree against those who, abusing the 
gospels, deny purgatory and the saints ; on the 
13th of December he preached against the 
** Lutheran pest." He joined himself with 
the Sorbonne against his former flock, launch- 
ing out decrees of exile and condemnation like 
any Magister of Paris. No doubt he argued to 



60 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

himself that where he counselled flight another 
would have lit the stake. But his apostasy 
caused him much hatred, as may be imagined. 
•' This Bishop Brigonnet," says Antoine Fro- 
ment, *' fearing to lose his Bishopric and his 
life, turned his coat and became a persecutor of 
those whom formerly he had instructed. . . . 
Soon after this miserable bishop, haunted by 
remorse, resigned his see and died of despair: 
a marvellous example of the horrible judgment 
of God against those who persecute the truth, 
having known it." This bitter tone, this acri- 
monious arrangement of simple facts (for Bri- 
gonnet died quietly enough, and maintained to 
the last his character of the enlightened man of 
culture), is common to all the Lutheran histo- 
rians of the time. By the Catholics, also, he 
was regarded with suspicion and dislike. Al- 
ready, some months before, Louisa of Savoy 
wrote in her diary : *' By the grace of the Holy 
Ghost my son and I began to recognize the 
hypocrites white, black, gray, smoke-colored, 
and of every hue, from which God in His infinite 
clemency has seen fit to preserve us." These 
hypocrites, we can have no doubt, were her 
pious neighbors of Meaux, — Brigonnet, her 
correspondent; Lefebvre, who sent her the 
Epistles of Saint Paul; Master Michel, her 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 6l 

chaplain : all Lutherans at heart. Louisa never 
pardoned this attempt upon her faith ; and 
Bri^onnet, disdained by the reformers whom 
he had betrayed, was no less himself an inno- 
vator, a suspect, a hypocrite in the eyes of the 
Catholic party. So strangely fallen was the 
Man of God. 

** My son and I," writes Louisa. She makes 
no note of Margaret, whose mystical fervor was 
heightened by persecution. She was now more 
than ever identified with the party of reform, for 
their abrupt danger had touched the strong- 
est fibre of her nature, — her compassion for 
the oppressed. Heedless of her own peril, 
she toiled day and night to rescue and pre- 
serve these impoverished fugitives, — to obtain a 
hiding-place for this, a pardon for that, a pension 
for the other. And she worked to such purpose, 
she used to such effect her influence with Fran- 
cis, that from 1521, when the persecution began, 
until 1525, the year of the captivity, no victim 
was burned alive at the stakes of the ortho- 
dox. Still there were other miseries, — flogging, 
branding, torture, miserable dungeons, from 
which she could not rescue all suspected. And 
the spectacle of so much pain and such injustice 
wounded her gentle heart, and did not rankle 
there. Strange tenderness for the oppressed, 



62 MARGARET OF ANGOULi:ME. 

that showed no reverse of hatred for the op- 
pressor ; constancy in well-doing, that knew no 
disdain for the weaker and more fickle, — this 
exquisite humanity, this perfume of charity, is 
the very breath of Margaret's soul. While 
rescuing Roussel and Lefebvre, sheltering the 
poor shepherdless flock of Meaux, she felt no 
bitterness towards their betrayer. She did not 
resent the failure of this timid pastor to whom 
she had intrusted her soul and so many oth- 
ers. He having flagged and fallen away, she 
quietly stepped into his vacant place and took 
upon her slender shoulders the burden he had 
dropped. From this moment Margaret, not 
Bri^onnet, is the centre of the movement of 
Meaux. 

No censure escaped her lips ; she did not 
even interrupt her correspondence with the 
Bishop, and maintained it always on the same 
tone of reverence and appeal. Perhaps it was 
not all charity. At least, I think a factor in 
that long-suff"ering charity of hers was a cer- 
tain chivalrous denseness, a certain obstinacy 
in clinging to an ideal, which made her pa- 
tiently accept the faulty Brigonnet as her spir- 
itual superior, even as she accepted Francis 
as her perfect hero, despite the many foibles, 
the long debasement, the patent degradation. 



THE AFFAIR OF MEAUX. 63 

which would have disenchanted any other wor- 
shipper. The pedestal on which this idealizing 
woman set her idols was so high that she did 
not see their feet of clay; and, bowed down 
before her shrines, she offered a life-long unpar- 
alleled devotion to those whose real qualities she 
never even saw. 



64 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME, 



CHAPTER IV. 

(1521-1524.) 

CONSTABLE BOURBON. 

*' II me fault mesler de beaucoup de chouses 
que me doibvent blen donner crainte; " thus 
Margaret wrote to Brigonnet in 1521. Aheady, 
indeed, she must have felt the dreadful approach 
of nearer troubles than wars with the Emperor 
or uneasy peace with England. In that year 
the King took from his schoolfellow, Constable 
Bourbon, the right to lead the vanguard, and 
gave it to his brother-in-law d'Alengon, a man 
without genius or experience of warfare. In the 
next summer Louisa of Savoy began a lawsuit 
against this Constable Bourbon, her cousin, in 
which she laid claim to the Bourbon estates. 
Charles de Montpensier, a Bourbon Cadet, had 
married Suzanne, the hunchbacked daughter of 
Pierre Duke of Bourbon and Anne of Beaujeu. 
Naturally he took possession of the vast inheri- 
tance which came with his wife from her father 
and her mother. But the Crown declared that 



CONSTABLE BOURBON. 65 

the estates of Anne of Beaujeu lapsed at her 
death to the King ; that she had, in fact, a mere 
Hfe-interest in them. And Louisa, a niece of 
Pierre, claimed his inheritance on the death of 
Suzanne. Thus in her cruel anger she hoped to 
denude the Constable of the whole of the heri- 
tage of his dead wife. Such a hatred as hers, 
altering the whole course of Europe for many 
years, deserves to be explained. Louisa was 
a violent hater; nor was this the first shock 
that her private spite had given to the public 
weal of France. She had already hated the 
house of Foix, — Madame de Chateaubriand, 
the King's almost royal mistress, and her broth- 
ers Lautrec and Lescun, the viceroys at Milan. 
In order to secure the disgrace of Lautrec, 
Louisa had intercepted the money which the 
King had finally despatched to pay the Swiss 
troops in the Milanese. Louisa embezzled the 
money, and the mercenaries revolted. Lautrec 
was disgraced, and France lost Milan. 

And now Madame directed her hate against a 
greater rival with larger interests at stake. The 
Constable Bourbon was, after the King, the 
most important personage of France. He pos- 
sessed, through his marriage with Suzanne of 
Bourbon-Beaujeu, no less than seven French 
provinces. When his eldest child was born the 

5 



66 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

King stood sponsor, and the guests were served 
at table by five hundred gentlemen in velvet. 
No prince in Europe displayed a more stately 
magnificence than he. He was, indeed, a strik- 
ing and picturesque figure, this half-Itahan sol- 
dier, only five years older than the King, but 
looking more resolved, maturer, with his tragic 
Southern aspect, set mouth, and great melan- 
choly eyes. He was no less brave than Francis, 
and a far better leader ; for indeed good soldier- 
ship was his natural inheritance from his Bour- 
bon ancestors, who had all been generals, and 
his Gonzaga forebears, all Condottieri. He was 
the cousin of those Mantuan Gonzagas who had 
but lately added Montferrat to their domains. 
This French Gonzaga was no less resolved to 
rise. Through a prudent marriage he had be- 
come the richest man in France, and he was 
determined that his courage and address should 
make him the most powerful. Already, in 15 13, 
Louis Xn. had created him Constable of France 
as a reward for his prowess in battle. King 
Francis, on his succession, might, however, have 
annulled this dangerous favor. No wise sov- 
ereign would permit a prince, young, popular, 
of a great race, and immensely rich, to remain 
Constable of France. An office so powerful, if 
occupied at all, should only be filled, as a com- 



CONSTABLE BOURBON. 6/ 

pliment to bygone valor, by some decrepit 
general too old to mutiny. For the Constable 
was virtually king of the army. The Sovereign 
himself, in time of war, could order nothing save 
through him. Knowing this, and seeing the 
Constable's proud and resolute mien, Henry 
of England had said, in 1520, ''Were he my 
subject, he should no longer wear his head ! " 

But Bourbon meant to wear his head and, if 
possible, a crown upon it. He found a means 
to keep in favor with the King through the all- 
powerful influence of Louisa. Louisa was forty- 
five years old, but still very handsome. She 
was far more ardent and vehement than in her 
youth, violent and tender at once, credulous 
as to the effect of her own charms ; in fact, a 
woman made to be deceived. She fell passion- 
ately in love with this dark young Bourbon 
whom she had brought up with her own chil- 
dren, and for some time he made great use 
of her affection. She was the King's mother 
and a very clever woman, still handsome, still 
courted ; no doubt, in spite of the thirteen years 
difference between them, he would have married 
her if no heir had been born to Francis, and 
during the first three years of his reign Queen 
Claude gave the King only daughters. But in 
15 18 the Dauphin was born, in 1519 Henry, the 



68 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

King's second son ; and then Bourbon began to 
shift his plans. If he still courted Louisa, it was 
in the hope of winning Renee, Queen Claude's 
young sister, whom he wished to marry, and as 
a means to the favor of the Duchess Margaret, 
with whom he fell in love; and gradually Ma- 
dame perceived that she had lost him. She 
remembered all that she had done for him; 
how her influence had kept him in power ; all 
the pensions she had heaped upon him, 24,000 
livres as Constable, 14,000 as Gentleman of the 
Chamber, 24,000 as Governor of Languedoc,. — 
this in addition to his vast estates. She remem- 
bered that she was old and he was young, that 
she loved him and he used her to his profit ; and 
then, in her furious indignation, she strove to 
undo all that she had done, to shatter this gran- 
deur she had herself built up. So in 1521 the 
King took the leading of the Vanguard from 
Bourbon, who was at least a soldier, and gave 
it to Alengon ; and in 1522 Madame began her 
lawsuit for the Bourbon estates. 

Bourbon was quite aware that the King's 
mother, rightly or wrongly, was certain to gain 
her suit. He was also aware that, shorn of his 
lands, his power would be gone. He was the 
greatest landowner in France ; the extent of his 
estates had become a proverb. 



CONSTABLE BOURBON. 69 

" L'Empereur est grand terrein, 
Plus grand que Monsieur de Bourbon," 

writes Clement Marot. He was, in fact, the 
standard of comparison. He was resolved not to 
lose his importance. But only two courses now 
were open to him : either, relying on Louisa's 
past affection, to marry her, the rival heir, or, 
in case of a decision granted in her favor, to 
mutiny against the crown of France. 

Charles of Bourbon, indignant, high-spirited, 
outraged, decided on the latter course. He was 
already regarded as the head of the popular 
party. The graver of the nobles were with him, 
Louis de Breze, Seneschal of Normandy, Saint 
Vallier, and many others. " All the great per- 
sonages," says Charles V., " are for him." The 
Parliament, no less, saw in the Constable the 
advocate of its rights and privileges, persistently 
disregarded by the King. The lawyers were 
with him, and the Liberal bourgeois. He was 
supposed to be the great reformer, the man who 
had the wrongs of the country at heart. " This 
virtuous prince," writes Cardinal Wolsey, '' see- 
ing the ill-conduct of the King and the vast 
extent of abuses, wished to reform the kingdom 
and assuage the poor people." This, of course, 
is stating the case from the point of view of 
the enemies of France. Yet if Bourbon had 



70 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

remained in his own provinces, there is no saying 
how his rebelHon might have ended. 

England and the Empire saw with dehght 
this dissension between Francis and the greatest 
of his subjects. They each sent a secret envoy 
to the Constable ; and it was privately agreed 
that as soon as Francis should be gone to 
reconquer Milan the English should invade Pic- 
ardy, the Germans and Spaniards enter Guienne 
and Burgundy, while the Constable should seize 
the central provinces. The kingdom conquered, 
each should satisfy what he considered his just 
claims : Henry should take the North, and call 
himself in earnest King of France ; Charles re- 
gain his old dukedom of Burgundy ; the Con- 
stable should govern Provence and Bourbonnais 
as a sovereign prince. So three claimants 
should be satisfied, and France exist no more. 

To such a pass the enmity of Louisa and his 
own furious anger had driven the Constable. 
He had of late had much to suffer: the King 
had publicly insulted him at table ; his general- 
ship was taken from him; his estates were to 
be handed to another. But at present Bourbon 
endured in silence, waiting for an expedient to 
leave Paris almost in battle array. 

Let us hear how it struck a contemporary. 
The Bourgeois of Paris writes : — 



CONSTABLE BOURBON. 7 1 

" And my said Lord of Bourbon, on Friday, the 2 7th 
of March of the said year 1522, left Paris, by the King's 
leave, to go through Brie and towards Provence ; and 
he took with him all the archers and all the crossbow- 
men of Paris, in order to take five or six hundred evil 
livers and bandits which did much harm in the flat 
country there. And many of them were hung. And 
thejice he went into his own land of Bourbonnais. 

" In the said year 1523, Friday the i ith of Septem- 
ber, news was brought to Paris by R^ne, the Lyons 
messenger, that Monsieur de Bourbon had left the land 
of France, and on Our Lady's day in September had 
departed in secret from his land of Bourbonnais ; and 
by the sound of trumpet he was proclaimed a traitor 
throughout the land of France ; and it was proclaimed 
that whoso should take the said Lord of Bourbon and 
deliver him into the hands of the said Grand Master, 
my Lord Alengon, or into the hands of M. de la Pahsse, 
the King would grant him 10,000 golden crowns; or 
for information where he could be taken, 20,000 
ordinary crowns." 

But soon it became known that no one would 
easily earn those 10,000 golden crowns; for M, 
de Bourbon was in the camp of the Emperor, 
preparing to invade Provence. The tide of 
opinion suddenly turned. Bourbon was no 
longer a popular hero ; men saw in him, and 
justly, a traitor leagued against his country with 
her bitterest enemies. Nothing could have been 



72 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

better for Francis, whose carelessness and frivolity 
had begun to disgust the more serious of his sub- 
jects. He was again the Knight of France, the 
champion of the French, the Ogier of his time, 
the true Amadis defending his kingdom from a 
traitor; while Bourbon, mistrusted even by his 
allies, obtained but the third place in the Em- 
peror's army. The Marseillais fought so well 
against the Constable that a panic seized the 
invading army, thrust back pell-mell into Italy, 
defeated without a blow. Meanwhile the nobles 
of Bourbon's party refused to rise. The rebellion 
came to nothing. 



SEQUELS. 73 



CHAPTER V. 

(1524-1525). 

SEQUELS. 

Helas, La Palice est mort, 

II est mort devant Pavie ; 
Helas, s'il n'estoit pas mort 

II seroit encore en vie. 

Quand le roi partit de France 

A la malheur il partit, 
II en partit le dimanche 

Et le Lundi il fust pris. 

Chanson de Pavie. 

Francis was not satisfied that he had pre- 
served his kingdom and secured his crown. 
A second time he determined to reconquer 
Milan. Against Louisa's earnest prayers he 
crossed the Alps, again to fight for that 
Milanese which her bitterness had lost him; 
and across the Alps with him went many a 
gallant gentleman who never should return. 
Bayard and Bonnivet and La Palice should 
fall upon the field; Alen^on return to die 
of a broken spirit; Montmorency and young 
Navarre, with the King himself, should fall 



74 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

into a long captivity. But these were all im- 
patient then to fight the Emperor, because the 
traitor Bourbon was sheltered in his army. 

The presence of Bourbon in the Imperial 
camp was, indeed, the strongest motive that 
Francis had to continue the campaign ; for 
the situation was in the highest degree diffi- 
cult and desperate. Germany, Spain, and Eng- 
land were banded together against France, 
which, after a definite success against the 
Emperor's army under Bourbon and Pescara, 
might with all honor have proposed an advan- 
tageous peace; but Francis could not rest till 
the traitor was punished, — till the traitor was 
punished and beautiful Milan reconquered. 

So, in an evil moment, he led his armies 
south. Louisa, who strongly disapproved of 
this rash venture, Margaret, anxious and grave, 
with her husband and her brother both in Italy, 
remained at Lyons with the poor consumptive 
Queen. Claude was dying in great resignation 
at twenty-five years of age. Before the armies 
reached Milan the King received the news that 
she was dead. He who had neglected her liv- 
ing, felt a genuine pang at her death. " I had 
not thought," he cried in naive remorse, " that 
the bonds of marriage were so hard and difficult 
to break. Could I buy her life with mine, she 



SEQUELS. 75 

should live again." But Claude was beyond 
all care and kindness. She left her three 
little boys, Frangois, Henri, and Charles, and 
her three little daughters, the pious, loving 
Charlotte, beautiful Magdelaine, and wise little 
Marguerite, in the custody of their father's sister. 
Henceforth Margaret was to them as a mother ; 
and the most touching and charming of her 
letters are those written to the absent King 
about his motherless children. 

Margaret had many troubles with this family 
of nephews and nieces ; and in her busy home 
at Lyons eagerly she watched the distant cam- 
paign, where her husband was, and her brother, 
and Montmorency her life-long friend ; yet the 
gout of Madame and the measles of the chil- 
dren seemed the most eventful things. Madame 
had injured her health with nursing the Queen. 
" I fear her health grows weaker and weaker," 
writes Margaret. And indeed, reflecting on the 
dangers and disasters which her passions had 
brought upon the kingdom, Louisa may well 
have grieved and grown weak. "■ The extremity 
of sorrow which she shows for the death of 
the Queen is quite incredible." Yet Louisa 
had never been a tender mother to poor ailing 
Claude. 

But Margaret, with her sweet dense kindness. 



^6 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

was not the woman to discover if anything 
worse than mourning ailed her mother. Like 
all idealists, she was not very quick of insight. 
To her, the death of Claude was an excuse suffi- 
cient for all ; and without inquiring too deeply, 
she strove to heal her mother's wound by a ten- 
der care which sheltered her as far as possible 
from trouble and apprehension. 

Just then the children took the measles. Mar- 
garet would not tell her mother, so ill and weary 
already, nor her brother, who needed all his 
heart for battle. It is only to Bishop Bri^onnet 
(no less than heretofore a guide, philosopher, 
and friend) that she opens her troubled heart. 
'' It has pleased our Lord to give Madame Char- 
lotte so grievous a malady of fever and flux 
after her measles, that I know not if now He 
will take her to Himself." This is on the 15th 
of September. But poor little Charlotte was 
not so easily released ; for thirty days she was 
very ill. Margaret scarcely left her side. She 
dearly loved this tender, spiritual little soul, to 
whom in after days she dedicated a poem of 
which we shall hear more than once again: 
*' Le Myrouer de I'Ame Pecheresse." While she 
stooped over the bed, tending the sick child in 
anxious loneliness of fear, the great affairs of the 
world went on outside. Milan was recaptured. 



SEQUELS. 77 

siege laid to Pavia. But these battles and sieges 
seemed all dim and lifeless, like a figured tapes- 
try shaken in the wind ; while, alive, suffering 
and real, little Madame Charlotte lay upon her 
knees, and Margaret spoke with her of Jesus 
and of Paradise. At last an end came : the 
poor little girl succumbed to exhaustion, — " de- 
livered from a little body that could not live on 
earth till eight years old ; " and Margaret writes 
to Brigonnet in a strain of strange religious ex- 
altation, like to that she displayed again in later 
years upon the death of her only son : — 

" Where the Strongest has come, he hath vanquished 
the armed flame, and hath commanded the sea to stop 
its waves, and hath left content and joyous, nor able to 
praise him enough, my heart and my spirit. Even (to 
say the truth) he hath cured and fortified my body, 
vainly laboring with little repose, for the space of a 
month, while the little lady was ill. But after her death 
I suffered for the King, from whom I had concealed 
his daughter's illness ; who yet divined her death, hav- 
ing dreamed three times that she said to him, ' Fare- 
well, my King, I go to Paradise ! ' [Adieti, mon Roy, je 
voys en Paradis /] and this caused him an extreme 
sorrow, which (by the goodness of God) he endured 
patiently. And Madame, who had not heard of it, 
learned it all through a captain of Adventure, and bore 
it in such a manner that from dinner-time till supper 
(one 'tear not waiting for the other, without uttering 



78 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

sighs of impatience or vexation) she did not cease to 
preach and undertake towards me the office of com- 
forter which I owed to her." 

Soon Margaret had to comfort her mother for 
a far heavier sorrow. The easy success of Milan 
was not followed up before Pavia. Yet the 3d 
of February, 1525, Francis despatched to his 
mother a letter three quarto pages long, with a 
plan of Pavia enclosed, showing her how certain 
the French army was of taking the town by as- 
sault. Ten days later the battle took place ; 
The French army was routed with disaster, all 
the great soldiers of France killed or captive, 
the King himself a prisoner. So ran the dread- 
ful news. Worse still for the weeping mother 
and daughter at Lyons, it was soon known that 
the cowardice and incapacity of the Duke of 
Alen9on was the cause of the worst disaster. 
He, the leader of the vanguard, had failed to 
come to the rescue of the King, abandoned by 
his Swiss. Not even Bourbon, the triumphant 
traitor, was more execrable that day in France 
than he. 

On the evening after the battle, Francis in his 
captive's tent drew off his ring and sent it to 
Soliman. By a less secret messenger he sent a 
letter to his mother: '' Of all things I have none 
left but honor, and life, which is safe." Yet he 



SEQUELS. 79 

beseeches them not to give way to too extreme 
a sorrow: ''For still I hope that in the end God 
will not forsake me." And so, like true com- 
forters, Margaret and her mother hide their des- 
perate grief from him ; writing cheerfully about 
little things ; beseeching him not to fast, it is 
bad for the health ; thanking God that his honor 
and life are safe ; and hiding from him the 
dreadful task they have — poor women ! — to 
keep order in the panic-stricken realm when the 
full extent of defeat is known. Bayard was killed 
in the autumn, and now Bonnivet is slain. Les- 
cun de Foix, La Palice, the great marshal, — 
they are all dead, with many others who were as 
a tower of strength. And Montmorency, the 
wise and cold, he and the young King of Na- 
varre, and Brion, the briUiant Admiral Chabot, 
are prisoners with the King of France. 

But Alengon, the disgraced, the hated, the 
shameful, he is neither dead nor in prison. Sick 
at heart, leading the miserable remainder of his 
troops, he makes his way to Lyons where his 
wife awaits him. As he marched along he must 
have heard the bitter words and angry songs 
of the resentful populace. The length and 
breadth of the land was sore against les ftiyards 
de Pavie. " I hate more than poison," cries 
Rabelais, " a man who flies when sword-play 



8o MARGARET OF ANG0UL:^ME. 

comes into fashion. Why am I not King of 
France for eighty or a hundred years? My 
God ! I would crop the tails of the curs who 
fled from Pavia." And in every village the 
laborers sang the first '' Chanson de Pavie " 
with its melancholy close : — 

" Mais par gens deshonnestes 
Fust laisse lachement." 

Another ballad was sung to the air " Que 
dites-vous ensemble." Through the streets, 
and along the lanes where the voices of the 
ploughers echoed gravely, the miserable Duke 
must have heard the same monotonous chant: 

" Qui vit jamais au monde 

Ung roy si courageux 
De se mettre en battaille ; 

Et delaisse de ceulx, 
En qui toute fiance 

Et qui tenoit asseur, 
L'ont laisse en souffrance ! 

Veez la le malheur ! " 

By the time the troops reached Lyons, the 
unhappy man was ill with despair and remorse. 
It was now April, two months after the disaster ; 
but France had not yet begun to forgive him. 
Even his wife, the gentle Margaret, would not 
see him. The man she had never really loved 



SEQUELS. 8 1 

was odious to her since he had ruined the 
brother she adored. But when she learned how 
seriously the poor defeated general took his fail- 
ure to heart, how he was actually dying of his 
disgrace and her resentment, then pity and duty 
came to her aid. She wrote to Francis : — 

"As for your poor sister, she writes this letter to 
you sitting at the foot of M. d'Alengon's bed j he has 
prayed me to present you, with my own, his very 
humble recommendation, and to say that had he seen 
you ere he died he would go more happily towards 
Paradise. I do not know what to say to you, my 
lord. All is in the hand of God. Only, I beseech you 
not to sorrow, either for him or for me ; and be sure 
that whatever comes, I hope that God will give me 
strength to keep my trouble from Madame." 

On the nth April the mediocre, luckless, un- 
happy Alengon breathed his last Margaret, 
drawn close to him by these last days of shame 
and pity and sorrow, sorrowed for the death she 
scarcely could regret. She writes : ■ — 

"Those first two days made me forget all reason, 
but since then, my lord, my mother has never seen me 
with a tear in the eye, or a mournful face ) for I should 
hold myself too much more than miserable if I, who 
can do you service in nothing, were the cause of hin- 
drance to her courage, who does so much for you and 

6 



82 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

for all yours. But whatever I can do to give her 
recreation, believe, my lord, I do it ; for I desire so 
much to see you both happy together, that, hoping in 
God to have this blessing, I neither will nor can think 
of any other thing." 



THE CAPTIVITY, 83 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CAPTIVITY. 

Left a captive in the tents of Charles, Francis 
looked towards every State in Europe and saw 
no hope of succor. England was against him ; 
Spain, Austria, Italy, Germany, were his enemies. 
Drawing his ring from his finger, Francis sent it 
as a sign to Soliman the Magnificent, Sultan of 
Turkey. 

The first messenger was murdered on his way ; 
but the ring was finally obtained by Ibrahim, 
the brilliant Vizier of the Sultan, who wore it 
in triumph. A second ambassador, a certain 
Frangipani, was immediately despatched ; he 
bore a letter and messages from Francis to 
Soliman, and returned secretly with the Sul- 
tan's answer. Thus a secret understanding 
began between France and the East, by the 
terms of which trade was to be encouraged 
between the two countries. Soliman promised 
that the Christian creed should be respected as 
his own. A French Consul was appointed at 
Alexandria. While, more than all this, it was 



84 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

agreed that Soliman should attempt to win the 
Hungarian frontier of the Empire, thus harass- 
ing Charles in the East and giving room for the 
development of France in the West. 

But before any result could come of this alli- 
ance Francis must be free. Soliman, in his letter, 
bids him not despair. It is not strange that great 
kings should be captive. 'j And he adds, *' My 
horse is always saddled, and my sword by day 
and night is girdled on." But it is difficult to 
see how Soliman c^ )uld rescue the royal captive, 
unless by invading Hungary he could call Charles 
and his armies from Madrid, and leave Spain, 
open to a French invasion. 

Such plans were vague and audacious, and 
the present misery very real. The King was 
taken from Lombardy and sent to Madrid. 
Meanwhile panic reigned in his kingdom. 
Notwithstanding the poverty and division of 
the Emperor's camp, it still seemed possible 
to abandoned France that Bourbon the traitor 
might enter in and ravage her. Religious dis- 
cord increased. The party of Luther and the 
Clerical party each attributed the sorrows of 
France to the corruption or the impiety of the 
other. In this year the first burnings began; 
and, under the influence of Cardinal Duprat, 
Louisa the Regent showed herself implaca- 



THE CAPTIVITY. 85 

ble towards the Reformation. The ParHatnent 
wrote to her representing " the inconveniences 
which may arise from the heresies which pullu- 
late throughout this realm ; " and trials were in- 
stituted against Lefebvre, Caroli, and Roussel. 
These were with difficulty rescued by Margaret, 
who procured an autograph remission of their 
process from her brother. Francis commanded 
Parliament to entreat the accused as " person- 
ages of great knowledge and men of letters and 
doctrine." But the danger ::was still so great 
that Roussel and Lefebvre ^fled to Strasburg, 
and henceforth corresponded under feigned 
names, only known to the initiated. Danger, 
however, only increased the fervor of the Re- 
formers, and from their exile they influenced 
the current of thought in France. The misery 
of earth helped to quicken the impulse towards 
Heaven. '' The farther they take you from us," 
writes Margaret to her brother in May, on the 
eve of his journey to Spain, ** the more increases 
in me the firm hope that I have of your deliver- 
ance and speedy return. For at the time when 
human wisdom fails and is troubled, then the 
master-work of our Lord is wrought; for it is 
He who alone will have the glory and the 
honor." 

So, in these early days of the captivity France 



86 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

awaited a miracle in favor of her King. His cap- 
tivity had revived all the enthusiastic devotion 
of his people. Amadis for chivalry, Absalom 
for beauty, Ogier for courage, — so the popular 
ballads of the moment portray him. The fight 
he made on foot alone against his captors of 
Pavia inspired a host of songs : — 

" Son cheval fust tud 

La on vist Olivier, 
Roland, aussy Richard 

Demenant leur mestier 
Combattant tout a pied 

Comme Hector Troyannois 
Oncques tel n'en sortit 

Du beau nom de Valoys." 

Through the whole civilized world his cap- 
tivity shed a brighter lustre on the chivalry of 
Francis. England classed him with Richard, 
her troubadour par excellence; France with 
Charlemagne and with John the Good, her 
paragons of honor ; and Soliman himself, writ- 
ing to the King in prison, reminds him that 
Bajazet, the hero of Turkey, suffered a like 
misfortune. But it was above all in Spain, in 
the land of his captivity, that the cult of Francis 
reached its most fantastic heights. The Span- 
iards, instinct with romance, chivalry, respect 
for heroic misfortune, saw their ideal in this 



THE CAPTIVITY. 8/ 

flimsy and volatile Francis. Thrown by the 
Austrian Charles (always a foreigner to all 
his subjects) into a dark, unsightly prison, the 
French King inspired a reverent pity in the 
generous heart of Spain. From the lowest to 
the highest, the nation was interested in the 
illustrious captive. The family of the Duke of 
Infantado received a caution from the Emperor, 
offended by their enthusiasm. ''Persons of great 
standing," writes Margaret later, "desire nothing 
more than the return of the Emperor to Italy ; 
and then you would not long be left in prison ! " 
Ximena del Infantado fell so passionately in love 
with the royal captive, that on his betrothal to 
another in 1526 she entered the rehgious life. 
And, indeed, Francis had never conquered so 
many hearts by his magnificence as yielded now 
to his misfortunes. 

Charles found himself in the position of a 
jailer, keeping his captive against the popular 
desire. The fret and annoyance of such a posi- 
tion hardened his heart. He behaved ungener- 
ously to the prisoner who was none the less his 
equal, his rival, his companion-in-arms. With 
no dislike to Francis (for whom, indeed, he 
ever had a contemptuous affection), he made 
his prison as dreary, as uncomfortable as pos- 
sible, thinking thus speedily to exact from him 



88 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

the surrender of Burgundy. But Francis, for 
all his volatile spirit, had a certain fineness of 
disposition, a certain real chivalry under his 
Amadis airs and graces. He refused to grant 
the Emperor's terms, though, as the year drew 
on, the Alcazar became, in the sultry summer 
weather, an intolerable exchange for Fontaine- 
bleau. Still Francis refused to dismember 
his kingdom ; growing a little weaker every 
month in his unaccustomed restraint, and at- 
taining much facility in making verses, the 
one amusement of his dreary prison. 

Naturally this heroic obstinacy increased yet 
further his popularity in Spain. The Emperor's 
sister, the young widow of the King of Portugal, 
shared the universal passion. Leonor of Austria 
was at this time about six-and-twenty years of 
age, not regularly beautiful. Yet her face, pre- 
served to us by a painter of Clouet's school, far 
exceeds in interest and charm the more regular 
beauties of her day. A thin face, delicately 
sharp in outline, a hatchet face it might be 
called unkindly, is set in bushy masses of crisp 
hair, whose reddish gold is wonderfully clear 
and beautiful in tint. The face, too, is fresh and 
fair in color. A charming, half-boyish face, with 
its shock of blond hair and eager chevaleresque 
expression ; an ardent face, with the Austrian 



THE CAPTIVITY. 89 

lip modified to the self-willed, resolute pout of a 
spoiled girl, not brooking hindrance to her gen- 
erous impulses. Yet this ardent blonde, with 
her look of chivalrous naivete, her brilliant hair 
and clear rosy color, her full lips, and alert ro- 
mantic air, has the dreamy, impassive, light- 
brown eyes, the thin finely arched jet-black 
brows of a quite dlliferent type. There is some- 
thing odd, unmatched, inharmonious, yet not 
unpleasing, in this brilliant face with the dull 
and dreamy gaze, — something which tells us 
that this grandchild of the fiery Maximilian 
was the daughter of the mad Juana. 

She had already played her romance, this 
quick-blooded Austrian-Spaniard, who repre- 
sented all those qualities of their mixed race 
which her brother Charles ignored. In her girl- 
hood, in her Flemish home, under the wing of 
her aunt, the politic Margaret, she had met a 
handsome, stalwart German, the fair-haired Pala- 
tine Frederic. The two young people had fallen 
violently in love with each other, and kept their 
passion a secret for some months. But finally 
some well-informed Prime Minister got a hint 
of it, and the wayward Leonor was married 
against her will to a dissolute old dotard, the 
King of Portugal. On his death, the Palatine 
Frederic renewed his offers. But Leonor had 



90 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

already heard of her brother's captive, — the 
Ogier, the Amadis, the Roland of France. She 
turned a deaf ear to her faithful Palatine. 

Leonor had been promised by her brother to 
the Constable Bourbon. She refused to wed 
the traitor who had ruined her hero. Her frank, 
expansive nature did not seek to hide her inter- 
est. She writes to Louisa, '' Would that it were 
in my power to deliver the King ! " And, seeing 
Leonor so devoted, a new condition of peace be- 
gan to be mooted in the court of Louisa at Lyons. 

A letter exists, of which the signature is 
quite illegible, dated the 2d of June, 1525, and 
addressed to Louisa. Here the new plan is 
formulated for, I think, the first time. It is 
proposed that Leonor shall be given in mar- 
riage, not to Bourbon, but to Francis ; that her 
daughter by her first husband be married to the 
young Dauphin; that the Duchess Margaret 
wed the Emperor, and Constable Bourbon the 
Princess Renee. On this plan the Duchy of 
Burgundy might be reserved for the eldest son 
of Leonor and Francis. This would, however, 
dismember the Dauphin's inheritance. On the 
6th of June, Madame, who was Regent in France, 
sent an embassy to Madrid, to treat of the 
marriage of Leonor with Francis and of the 
Dauphin with her daughter. But all the other 



THE CAPTIVITY, 9 1 

conditions of peace waited the arrival of Ma- 
dame d'Alengon; for it was now determined 
that the Duchess Margaret should visit her 
brother at Madrid and solicit the Emperor on 
his behalf " The arrival of Madame Margue- 
rite," writes Brion in July from Venezuello, '* will 
decide the deliverance of the King." 

After some delay the Emperor sent a safe- 
conduct to Margaret, and she prepared for her 
adventurous journey. Many mistrusted the in- 
tegrity of Charles, and feared that he might 
invent some pretext to detain her as a hostage. 
Dieu viielle que la fin see como lo principe ('' God 
grant that the end be no worse than the begin- 
ning"), wrote at this moment a citizen of Mar- 
seilles. And many feared other perils less au- 
gust, — the highway robbers who then infested 
the less-travelled portions of France and Spain. 
The season, too, was signally unhealthy, — hot, 
with violent storms and thunder. But Margaret 
disregarded all these things ; she was to see her 
brother again and to do him a service. 

Much was, indeed, hoped for this journey, 
much expected from the influence of Margaret 
upon the Emperor. At another moment she 
might have shrunk from petitioning the man 
who had not yet answered the proposals which 
gave her to him in marriage. But during this 



92 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

long, tedious journey she was subject to an ac- 
cess of exaltation, such as in times of great dan- 
ger and difficulty she had experienced before. 
She seemed impervious to any thought but 
one, that she was nearing her captive brother; 
and as needles do not hurt the tender flesh of 
tranced women, nor tortures reach the sense of 
martyrs in their hour of crowning, so neither 
bodily discomfort nor wounded pride touched 
the feeling of Margaret at this moment. 

On her road towards Madrid, a fortnight's 
journey then from the frontier, she sent frequent 
letters to her brother. " I implore you," she 
cries, '' to believe that whatsoever I can do in 
your service, were it to scatter to the winds the 
ashes of my bones, nothing would be to me 
either strange, or difficult, or painful, but conso- 
lation, repose, and honor. And at this hour, 
my lord, I well know what strength of love 
our Lord has put in us three; for that which 
seemed to me impossible, thinking only of my- 
self, is easy in the memory of you ; and this 
makes me desire, for your good, things which 
the pains of death should not have made me 
wish for my own repose." 

On her slow and painful way Margaret was 
met by dreadful news, — the King was very ill. 
The hot summer weather and close confinement 



THE CAPTIVITY. 93 

had brought him to death's door. The news 
spread hke wildfire, causing a thrill of horror in 
France. The Dauphin was but seven years old, 
and a long regency seemed to threaten the ex- 
hausted nation. *' News came," says the Bour- 
geois of Paris, '' that the King was dead, captive, 
in a town called Madril ; whence great trouble 
and sorrow arose among the people of Paris and 
throughout the land of France ; and this lasted 
nigh a month." 

Meanwhile Margaret hastened her journey to- 
wards her dying brother. In her litter, as she 
went, she wrote songs about him : — 

" Le desir du bien que j'actsndz 

Me donne de travail mati^re ; 
Une heure me dure cent ans, 

Et me semble que ma lictiere 
Ne bouge, ou retourne en arriere ; 

Tant j'ay de m'avancer desir. 
O qu'eir est longue, la carriere 

Ou a la fin gist mon plaisir ! 

Je regarde de tous costes 

Pour veoir s'il arrive personne ; 
Pryant sans cesser, n'en doubtez, 

Dieu, que sante a mon Roy donne. 
Quant nul ne voy, I'oiel j'abandonne 

A pleurer ; puis sur le pappier 
Ung peu de ma douleur j'ordonne : 

Voilk mon douleureux mestier ! 



94 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME, 

" O qu'il sera le bienvenu, 

Celluy qui, frappant a ma porte 
Dira : Le Roy est revenu 

En sa sante tres bonne et forte ! 
Alors la seur, plus mal que morte, 

Courra baiser le messaiger 
Qui telles nouvelles apporte 

Que son frere est hors de dangler ! " 

But no messenger came to win Margaret's 
embraces by such welcome news. The King 
sank lower and lower. An abscess had formed 
on the crown of his head ; the body, already 
wasted by fever, could scarcely support this 
additional cause of weakness. On Monday, 
the 1 8th of September, Francis was so ill that 
his attendants sent for the Emperor, who all 
this time had never visited his ailing captive. 
Charles was really shocked when he heard that 
his rival lay a-dying. He travelled all the next 
day from Segovia to Madrid. It was dark when 
he reached the Alcazar where Francis was con- 
fined. Charles dismounted, leaving his cortege 
outside, lest their presence should fatigue his 
prisoner. The Viceroy of Naples and Anne 
de Montmorency met him at the gate, lighting 
the way with torches. So they reached the 
unprincely room where the most magnificent 
prince in Europe lay dying on his prison bed. 



THE CAPTIVITY, 95 

Seeing the Emperor enter, Francis tried to 
raise himself on his elbow ; but Charles, who, 
after all, was still a young man with a natural 
heart, threw himself on his knees beside the bed 
and flung himself into the arms of Francis. So 
for a long time captive and captor held each 
other tightly embraced. 

Then said Francis, who witnessed this affec- 
tion with some excusable irony, " Sire, you see 
before you your prisoner and your slave ! " 

** Nay," cried Charles, with real remorse, '* my 
good brother and true friend whom I hold as 
free ! " 

This was too much for Francis. He looked 
round the room. 

" Your slave ! " he repeated. 

" My friend, who shall be free ! " repeated the 
Emperor. 

So the little scene has been handed down to 
us. We can imagine to what hopes and de- 
sires gave rise these words of Charles, dictated 
half by generous remorse, half by a desire to 
keep alive a valuable prisoner. On the morrow 
Margaret arrived. It was the 20th of Septem- 
ber. The Emperor was still at the Alcazar. 
When the bustle of her attendants announced 
her arrival he went downstairs to receive this 
woman who had been proposed to him as a 



96 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

wife. He found her in the doorway, pale and 
in tears. She was dressed from head to foot in 
white, the mourning of a royal widow. He led 
her, still weeping, to her brother. When he 
shut the door on their meeting, he must have 
remembered that proposal of marriage, and re- 
called the pale, dishevelled woman he had left. 
She had had no time to repair the disorders of 
travel ; she was worn with her long, hot journey 
over rough, unshaded roads. Her beautiful hair 
and graceful figure were seen at a disadvantage. 
Her long face with the marked features must 
have appeared haggard in its grief. At least 
so much is clear: Charles, who at twenty-five 
years old was the most important personage of 
his age, did not fall in love with this pale and 
tearful widow of three-and-thirty, whom he now 
encountered for the first time. We hear no 
more of a marriage between him and Margaret. 
Meanwhile the joy was great between the 
brother and the sister. For the moment 
Francis appeared out of danger. But three 
days after, on the 25th of September, the sink- 
ing of death appeared to overpower him. 
Montmorency sent a hurried message to the 
Emperor, who received with chill resignation 
the news that his scheming was outplanned 
by Death. *' God has given him to me," he 



THE CAPTIVITY. 97 

exclaimed, " and God has taken him away ! " 
Yet he knew that if Francis died the battle of 
Pavia had been bought too dearly. 

Meanwhile Margaret, in agony and exalta- 
tion, knelt praying by her brother's side. 
Francis lay quite insensible upon his bed ; but 
none the less his sister had an altar dressed in 
his cell, and sent for the Archbishop and his 
priests to say a Mass. At the moment of the 
elevation of the Host the Archbishop turned 
and spoke to the dying King. Francis opened 
his eyes and asked for the Holy Sacra- 
ment. That evening the abscess broke, and 
immediate danger was over. 

The King was still very weak, still feverish, 
and needing better air and greater comforts 
than his prison could supply. Margaret at 
once began negotiations for a peace. But 
now she found the Emperor did not remember 
the words that had so often been quoted to her. 
He seemed in no haste to set his good brother 
free. 

Margaret was in great distress. Even for her 
brother's sake she could not counsel the surren- 
der of Burgundy. And yet, unless she could 
satisfy Charles, there seemed nothing but per- 
petual imprisonment for Francis. No other 
king would come forward as a champion. 

7 



9^ MARGARET OF ANGOULMmE. 

Soliman as yet had made no sign, nor would 
he be likely to leave Turkey in the winter, and 
before another summer came her brother might 
be dead. Louisa, at home, had concluded a 
peace with Henry of England, but that wary 
king would only risk his moral support ; and, 
to comphcate her troubles, Montmorency had 
become jealous of her influence with her sick 
brother. She has to warn Francis not to listen 
to such tales of her as this old and long-loved 
friend may tell him. '' I pray you, my lord," 
she writes, '' keep me in your good graces, in 
spite of Montmorency, who is jealous." 

Meanwhile the outer world kept assuring her 
that she was certain to conclude an advanta- 
geous peace. " A vous, Madame, I'honneur et 
la merite," write the ministers from France in 
premature congratulation. '' Ne fais doubte que 
Madame d'Alengon, vostre seur, conclura tost 
une bonne paix," writes Charles himself to the 
King in the letter where he excuses himself 
from paying further visits to his captive. But 
Margaret must have suffered many a bitter 
doubt. She writes to her brother on the road 
to Toledo, from a village whither she has gone 
to conduct her business with the Emperor ; and 
her letter (before the 13th) is full of trouble and 
of wounded pride : - — 



THE CAPTIVITY. 99 

October, 1525. 
My Lord, — You will have heard from Monsieur 
d'Ambrun and Babou of the terms they persist in here, 
which are not like the letters and the kind words which 
V^r6 brought you from his master, as you shall know 
at greater length from their lips. Since their departure 
the Viceroy has sent me word that in his opinion it 
were better for me to go to meet the Emperor \ but 
I have forwarded him a message by Monsieur de 
Senlys that I have never yet stirred from my lodging 
without being sent for, and that when the Emperor 
chooses to send for me I am to be found in a certain 
convent, where at present I have stayed from one 
o'clock till five, vainly waiting an answer. 

This is already the third day I have scarcely set my 
foot outside of convents ; and this I have told the 
Viceroy I shall continue to do, so that the world at 
large may know that if I do not speak with the 
Emperor, still my rank requires me not to court 
his courtiers and tamper with the servants of a 
master who promised you that I should speak to 
him alone of your affairs. I shall see, this evening, 
what they will do ; and to-morrow, having received 
your commands, I shall follow them as best I can. And 
I assure you, my lord, that here they are so perplexed 
and hindered that they greatly fear I shall ask the 
Emperor's leave to retire, — or so I gather from what 
has been said to the seneschal and to Senliz, — and I 
fancy that by keeping our heads high a little longer we 



100 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

may force them to speak another language. And, come 
what may, we will deliver you by the grace of God. 
But I beseech you, since they set so infamously to 
work, do not trouble yourself about the slow progress 
we make in bringing them to the point where so greatly 
desires to arrive 

Your Marguerite.^ 

Finally, on the 13th of October Margaret was 
received at Toledo by the Emperor in person, 
" with great politeness," says Ferreras, the Span- 
iard ; but Margaret does not seem so satisfied. 
She writes to her brother, — 

" I found him very cold {je le trouvay Men froit), 
but not inclined to stand on ceremony ; for he put me 
off on pretext of speaking to his council, and said he 
would give me an answer to-day. And then he took 
me to see Queen Alyenor, his sister, where I stayed 
until quite late ; and last night I went to see her, and 
she spoke to me in terms of great friendliness. It is 
true she goes on her journey ^ to-morrow, and I must 
go and take leave of her. I think "".he goes more by 
obedience than by choice, for they keep her very much 
in order. And as I was talking to her the Viceroy 
came in quest of me, and I went to the Emperor's 
apartments, who sent for me to come to his chamber ; . 

1 Champollion-Figeac. 

2 To Talavera, out of the way of Madame d'Alenzon's 
influence. (State Papers, Cardinal de Granvelle.) 



THE CAPTIVITY. lOI 

and he told me he desired your deliverance in perfect 
amity ; but, in the end, he stopped at the question of 
Burgundy." 

Margaret, by this time, centred her hopes on 
the intercession of Leonor. The Emperor's fine 
speeches, though abundant, covered an iron will, 
and she learned to put little trust in them. " He 
assures me always," she writes, '^ that he will do 
a thing that I shall marvel at." *' But," she adds 
elsewhere, " I think they all wish to content me 
without doing anything in reason." And again, 
** Every one tells me he loves the King, but I 
have little experience of it." The only way to 
get at a peace was through Leonor, who might 
bring Burgundy as a dower. 

" I desire, for your good, things which the 
pains of death should not make me wish for 
my own repose." So Margaret had written to 
her brother on her journey to Madrid ; and 
now she found herself obliged perforce to agree 
to cruel term?. *' I assure you, my lord," she 
writes to Francis, "' that the office of solicitor 
in so unreasonable a company is a far more dif- 
ficult service than it was to be your physician 
when you were sick." 

Not until the end of the month was any 
result obtained from the frequent conferences 



102 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

between Margaret and the Emperor; then the 
following conditions were drawn up and sent to 
the King, — '' things which the bitterness of 
death should not make me wish for my own 
repose." 

The King of France was to resign Burgundy, 
Auxonne, Macon, Auxerre, La Brie, Bar-sur- 
Seine, to the banks of the Somme. To 
this extravagant demand Margaret would not 
agree. 

He was to resign Tournay, Flanders, and 
Artois ; he was to resign all right to Milan 
and Naples; he was to resign all pretensions 
to Aragon. Agreed. 

He was to abandon Henry d'Albret, King 
of Navarre, Robert de la Marche, and others, 
to the Emperor's justice. Not agreed to by 
Margaret. 

He was to marry Leonor, Queen of Portugal, 
and settle Burgundy on their joint heirs. 
Refused by Charles. 

M. de Bourbon, his allies and friends, to be 
reinstated in their former positions. Agreed. 

Such miserable terms were the best to be 
obtained. With a sore heart must Margaret 
have watched the couriers set out from Toledo, 
carrying the news to her brother in prison. If 
he refused this peace, perpetual imprisonment 



THE CAPTIVITY. 103 

lay before the gayest and most splendid mon- 
arch of Europe. If, enfeebled by long cap- 
tivity, he assented to these conditions, France 
must perforce descend to the level of a petty 
State. 

But when in a few days the couriers returned, 
her heart must have beat high with glad recog- 
nition of her brother's chivalry. His letter 
ran : — 

MoNSilfcUR, MON Frere,^ — I know you cannot con- 
demn me to perpetual imprisonment more honestly 
than by asking, for my ransom, an impossible thing. 
On my side I am resolved to take my prison in good 
part, being sure that God, — who knows I merit it not 
for long, being the captive of honorable warfare, — God 
will give me strength to bear it patiently. And I have 
no regret, save only the fact that the honest proposals 
which you chose to hold to me in my illness should 
be barren of effect. 

Thus affairs were still in the same state as on 
the morrow of Pavia. 

Margaret was now in despair. Ferreras, the 
Spanish historian, assures us that she undertook 
to get Francis out of prison in disguise ; that she 
put in his bed a negro who was accustomed to 
carry the wood to the King's fire, and dressing 

1 Champollion-Figeac. 



104 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

her brother in the slave's attire, and having 
blacked his face, attempted to escape with 
him in the dusk, but was discovered by a 
groom of the chambers. This may be true, 
or it may be a mere blundering remembrance 
of the escape of Henry d'Albret from Pavia. 
But in either case it was evident there was no 
rescue for the King of France. 

In November another scheme began to occupy 
Margaret and her brother, — a scheme by which 
the Emperor would have left in his hands no 
king whom a hard captivity might incline to 
shameful terms, but a simple nobleman whom 
he could have no interest to misuse. In his 
prison at Madrid Francis spent long hours in 
drawing up the act of abdication by which he 
renounced the crown of France in favor of his 
eldest son. In these letters-patent Francis nar- 
rates his misfortunes of Pavia, his illness in 
prison, and the rigor of Charles ; he speaks of 
the journey of Margaret, and how all her reason- 
able efforts were refused ; then he adds that he 
would rather that he should remain all his lifetime 
in prison than sever his kingdom of France in 
pieces. He and his children will pay the price, 
"" They are born for the good of my kingdom, — 
true children of the public weal ; " and France, 
he reminds his subjects, has been governed well 



THE CAPTIVITY. 105 

by younger kings with the help of good counsel. 
He therefore appoints the Dauphin Francis, King 
of France, under the regency of Madame. In 
the event of the death of Madame, her place 
shall be filled by '^ nostre tres chere et tres 
amee seur unicque Marguerite de France;*' 
but in case of the deliverance of the King 
this act and all its contents to be held null and 
void. 

History with one voice has attributed the 
inspiration of this act to Margaret. This one 
counsel, the cheering cordial of her presence, 
and the furtherance of a friendship between her 
brother and Leonor, was all she had accom- 
plished in the visit from which she had hoped 
so much. And now that visit was at an end. 
She had incautiously let the three months cov- 
ered by her safe-conduct slip towards the close, 
dreading no treachery on the Emperor's part in 
her sweet, dense reliance on the honor of others. 
But she was warned in time, either by the sus- 
picion of her brother or by some watchful friend. 
Tradition records that Constable Bourbon, who 
had loved ^this gentle and courageous woman, 
could not stand by and see her condemned un- 
witting to a dreary imprisonment. After many 
a debate, the legend runs, he at last sent secret 
word to Francis that if Margaret were not out of 



I06 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Spain by the close of December, the Emperor 
would consider her his captive. From some 
source, at least, she learned her danger at the 
end of November. By forced marches and 
unrelaxed haste there was just time to reach 
home in safety. 

Margaret set out at once, grieving sore to 
leave her brother. It was arranged that she 
should not wait for the Act of Abdication, 
which should be brought to France by Mont- 
morency, whose ransom was paid by Francis, 
and who would leave Spain at the new year. 
Thus, should she fail to arrive in time, the 
letters-patent would none the less be safe. 
So in sore distress of mind the poor sister 
departed. 

All her hopes had come to nothing, all her 
endeavors had failed. There was still an end- 
less prospect of exile or captivity before the 
adored brother and king to whom she said 
*' Adieu ! " perchance forever. How willingly 
would she not have stayed behind and shared 
his prison ! But she had a task to perform, 
another service to render. She must return 
to France, attend to his affairs, and educate 
his children. If she let fall her burden, there 
was the less hope for him. 

She wrote to Montmorency from Alcala, the 



THE CAPTIVITY. 107 

first stage of her journey, on the 20th of 
November : — 

My Cousin, — This morning when I awoke I received 
your letter, and I leave you to think if I was glad to 
hear news of the King. As for my news, the body is 
but too well ; but the spirit, I cannot deny it, remem- 
bers that which is left behind. Do you know that 
all night long I held the King's hand, and would 
not rouse myself in the morning, so as to have that 
pleasure a little longer ? I try to take this departure 
as well as I can ; but succor me with news of him as 
often as you may. Let me hear some good news — if 
you have any to tell. 

That morning of discouragement and poign- 
ant regret was the first of many such days. 
She can think of nothing but the brother she 
has left. She encounters Brion, going with 
news from the frontier to the King. '* Would 
to God," she cries, " that it were I returning ! 
My speed would be nowise Brionnicque." But 
every day takes her farther and farther away. 
At last she writes to the brother whom, after all 
her pains, she has left unaided, and beseeches 
him to let her return and share his danger. She 
writes vaguely and strangely, feeling the risk 
to Francis if her letters fall into the secret and 
suspicious hands of Charles : — 



I08 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Sire, — That which you were pleased to write me, 
saying you would tell me further, has made me go on, 
hoping, moreover, that you would not leave the straight 
road, and flee from them who, for all their happiness, 
only desire to see you, though worse off than before. 
[Is this a last prayer to give up Burgundy and be free ?] 
Let my intention be prescribed, if you should ever need 
the honest and ancient service which I have borne and 
bear to your good grace. And if the perfect imper- 
fection of a hundred thousand faults make you disdain 
my obedience, then, at least. Sire, do not increase my 
lamentable misery by demanding experience in addi- 
tion to defeat, knowing my impotence without your 
aid, as you shall learn further by a sign I send. And 
I ask for the end of my misfortunes and the beginning 
of a good new year, only that you may let me be for 
you some Kttle of that which infinitely you are to me, 
and will be to me, without ending, in my thoughts. 
And awaiting the joy of seeing you and of speaking 
with you. Sire, my desire of meeting presses me to 
humbly beseech you to let me know the answer by this 
messenger. And if it be no trouble to you, I will set 
off at once, feigning another occasion. And there is 
no stress of weather nor roughness of the roads that 
will not be turned for me into an exceeding pleasant 
repose. And I shall be most grateful to you ; and yet 
more grateful if it please you to bury my letters in the 
fire and my words in silence. Else you will render 
worse than dead my miserable life. 



THE CAPTIVITY, 109 

Francis had the force to refuse this agonized 
appeal. He neither called his sister back nor 
yielded Burgundy. He sent her on to France 
and she obeyed, though sick at heart and shorn 
of all natural trust in her own efforts, " of which 
you know the impotence without your aid." 
But since the King commanded it, she travelled 
on, and on the 15th of December she was home 
in France ; she was in her mother's arms. 

Back in France at last, and back again with- 
out the good news she had gone so far to get; 
back in a disappointed, weary, restless, and 
ironic country; back to hear the people singing 
in the streets, no longer of Ogier and Charle- 
magne, but a new satirical ballad, — 

"Rens, rens-toy, Roi de France, 
Rens-toy done, car tu es pris ! '* 

back to confront Parliament with a writ of abdi- 
cation, and a dissatisfied country with the news 
of a Regency of women. Yet not for lack of 
striving was her task undone. 

What else could she have done? Any peace 
that Charles would grant must of necessity dis- 
member France. " And so," concludes the 
Bourgeois of Marseilles, ** the said lady returned 
by land, and she made no good cheer, and not 
without cause ; for she could not agree with the 



no MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Emperor that her brother should be ransomed 
by money, but they demanded a portion of the 
realm, which we could not grant without great 
loss and dishonor. Dieu per sa pietat nos mande 
bueno pas." 



QUEEN OF NAVARRE, III 



CHAPTER VII. 

(1525-1530). 

QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 

Scarcely had Margaret returned with her 
mother to Lyons, on their slow progress from 
the frontier to the capital, when they were joined 
by another fugitive from the Emperor's prisons. 
Henry d'Albret, the young King of Navarre, 
had been taken captive with Francis, and since 
February he had been imprisoned in the fortress 
of Pavia. Despairing of any deliverance, one 
moonlit December night he dressed himself in 
his page's clothes and let himself down from his 
window into a dried-up moat, leaving his servant 
sleeping in his bed. The next morning a feeble 
voice behind the curtains answered the turnkey, 
whom a second page assured that the King was 
ill that day ; nor till the night was the farce dis- 
covered, when the jailer generously pardoned 
the two devoted pages. Meanwhile their mas- 
ter, a daring lad of two-and-twenty, escaped 
as best he might towards France, ** intempeste 



112 MARGARET OF ANGOULi^ME. 

noctis silentio, et lune claritatis favore proadju- 
vante," as a contemporary narrated to Wolsey. 
On Christmas-eve he reached St. Just-sur-Lyon. 
It was nearly a year since he had breathed freely, 
and now he was safe in France.^ He rested 
there two days, whence he wrote to his chancel- 
lor to announce his escape; and then he made 
his way to the court of Louisa. He knew the 
Regent well; for on his mother's death, in 15 19, 
the young King of Navarre had been sent to the 
French Court, where Francis had shown great 
favor to the spirited and clever lad. There, too, 
he must often have seen Duchess Margaret, then 
a charming young married woman, the centre of 
a brilliant court, whom he should now meet in 
her widowhood, mournful and sick at heart. 

But if h4 found her no longer the star of a 
court, he found her the heroine of Europe. 
Her embassy, though seemingly fruitless, had at 
least established her devotion and her address. 
Charles V. declared he had not thought it pos- 
sible a woman could speak so well. Young 
Henry d'Albret, impetuous, and always ready 

1 The traditional date of this escape, April 11, 1525, fol- 
lowed by Genin, must be inexact, since in a letter to Helie 
Andre, dated December 27, 1525, at St. Just-sur-Lyon, Henry 
d'Albret narrates his escape as having happened a few days 
before. 



QUEEN OF NAVARRE. II3 

to fall in love, gave the reins to his admiration 

for this brave and tender woman. They had 

many adventures to tell each other, many an 

instance of the Emperor's perfidious coldness. 

Margaret, who ever since her journey into Spain 

hated Charles with a vigorous hatred strange 

in that kindly heart, found ample sympathy in 

Henry d'Albret, to whom the Emperor was not 

merely an ungenerous captor, but the usurper 

of his kingdom. 

Another occasion for friendship lay in the 

tolerance with which the young King viewed 

the new ideas of reform. Beam had never 

» 

been a narrowly Catholic State ; Margaret, often 
sorely grieved by the cruel intolerance of her 
brother and the Cardinal de Tournon, must have 
turned for sympathy to this young Bearnols 
who, like herself, dreaded the Inquisition as the 
deadliest blight that could fall on any kingdom. 
Thus they had two essential points in com- 
mon, — unity of interests and religious sym- 
pathy. For the rest, Duchess Margaret was 
a charming woman of the world, socially and 
intellectually the superior of Henry, and she 
was the sister of the King whose influence was 
most necessary to him. He was an impetuous, 
brave, ambitious youth, sufficiently resembhng 
her knightly ideal to attract her interest, unfor- 



114 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

tunate enough to command her compassion. 
He was poor and valiant, he was kind and just 
to his subjects ; and these would be great merits 
in the eyes of Margaret. That he was head- 
strong, fickle, and violent was scarcely apparent ; 
and he was so young. He had, indeed, much 
in his favor. " Had he not been so given to 
women as he was," says Bordenave, " he would 
have been irreprehensible. He loved his people 
like his own children." Margaret, listening to 
all his generous plans on behalf of his subjects, 
became warmly interested in their ardent and 
unfortunate young king ; and he wished nothing 
more than to marry the only sister of the King 
of France. 

But in this early spring of 1526 Margaret had 
much to do beside talking with Henry .d'Albret. 
In February Anne de Montmorency returned to 
France, his ransom paid, with the news that 
Francis was concluding a treaty with Charles, 
to whose sister Leonor he had been formally 
betrothed on the 12th of February. The ap- 
proaching release of the King gave great satis- 
faction in France, but not the joy, the outburst 
of thanksgiving with which she would have 
hailed it on the morrow of Pavia. The King's 
deliverance meant poverty and dismemberment 
to France ; meant the imprisonment of the 



QUEEN OF NA VARRE, 1 1 5 

Royal princes. And it was barely four months 
since Francis had sworn that he would rather 
die in prison than subject her to such disgrace ! 
The King was to be the King again, but no 
longer Ogier, no longer Roland. A note of 
satire pierces through the songs which the 
people made about their prince in his hard 
captivity: — 

" Courrier qui porte lettre, 

Retourne-t-en k Paris ; 
Et va-t-en dire a ma mere 

Va dire a Montmorency, 
Qu'on fasse battre monnoie 

Aux quatre coins de Paris 
S'il n'y a de I'or en France 

Qu'on en prenne a Saint-Denis, 
Qui le Dauphin on am^ne 

Et mon petit fils Henry," etc.. 

There is no condition he will not grant for 
freedom's sake. 

It was not only gold, not only the Royal 
children that Charles demanded ; he required 
the province of Burgundy. And those that sur- 
mised the contents of the peace could not know 
that the King in prison had signed before wit- 
nesses two secret protests, whereby he declared 
that a prisoner under lock and key is in no wise 
constrained to keep a forced obligation. 



Il6 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

In this month of February, when Montmo- 
rency brought the news of the treaty into 
France, the children who were to be exchanged 
as hostages for their father were themselves 
very ill with measles (or so Margaret calls their 
illness, probably scarlatina) accompanied with 
long and severe fever. She writes : — 

" Monsieur d'Angouleme took it with a very bad 
fever ; and then M. d'Orleans, but he was not so ill ; 
and then Madame Madelaine, but very slightly; and 
lastly, for company's sake, M. le Dauphin, without 
either pain or fever. And now they all are quite cured 
and very well. And M. le Dauphin is doing wonders 
at his lessons, mixing with his schooling a hundred 
thousand other occupations ; and there is no more 
question of flying into passions, but rather of all the 
virtues. M. d'Orleans (Henry) is nailed to his books, 
and says he will be good ; but M. d'Angouleme 
(Charles) knows more than the others, and does things 
which seem rather prophecies than childish play ; so 
much so, my lord, that you would be astonished to 
hear them. The little Margot is like me : she will 
not be ill. But here every one tells me of her won- 
derful grace, and she becomes prettier than ever was 
Mademoiselle d'Angouleme." 

As February passed away and the children 
recovered, Margaret had to prepare them for the 
change to come, - — for the price the two elder 



QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 11/ 

boys, Francis and Henry, were to pay for their 
father's freedom. She must have spoken to 
them of the ardent and chivalric Queen, the 
betrothed of their father, whose wards they were 
to be. On the 17th of March the exchange 
was made. The two children were taken to 
Bayonne, and thence to the river Bidassoa, be- 
tween Fontarabia and Andail, near St. Jean de 
Luz. They and their attendants embarked from 
the banks of Navarre at the same moment as 
the boat of Francis left the Spanish border. 
One moment's glimpse in passing, and the two 
melancholy children (one eight years old, one 
seven) were in a hostile country, in the hands of 
the Constable of Castile. One happy, careless 
glance, and Francis was on the friendly shore, 
had leaped on his horse and made it prance 
and curvet as he cried, '' Now, at last, I am a 
King again ! " 

Francis was not yet actually in his own king- 
dom, but in the territory of that young King, 
Henry d'Albret, who, with Margaret, was so 
anxiously waiting his arrival. Francis was at 
first: indignant when he. heard of the match that 
he was required to sanction ; for Margaret, at 
this moment, was half-promised to the Emperor 
of Germany, to the King of England, and to 
Constable Bourbon. But in the first moment 



Il8 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

of his return he would not show himself un- 
grateful. Many friends awaited him at Bayonne, 
eager to clasp his hand again, — Margaret, 
happy and well, whom he had last seen so mis- 
erable in his prison at Madrid, and Henry 
d'Albret, his fellow-captive at Pavia, now his 
host. There were also Louisa his mother, the 
faithful and politic regent, and Montmorency, 
who had concluded the negotiations that Mar- 
garet had begun. Two women, moreover, eager 
and fearful beyond the rest, watched the King, 
and watched each other, to see which he first 
would greet. Francis turned at last, and, pass- 
ing by Madame de Chateaubriand without a 
word, went up to a blond and handsome Nor- 
man lady, Mademoiselle Anne du Heilly de 
Pisseleu, a maid of honor to his mother, a talka- 
tive, lively creature, suspected of Huguenotism, 
to whom he had written a letter in verse from 
Madrid. 

Now Francis had recovered kingdom, free- 
dom, mother, sister, mistress, and friends ; but 
the price was still to be paid, — not only the 
ransom of two million golden crowns, but the 
province of Burgundy. As for Burgundy, Fran- 
cis intended to leave that debt unpaid. He dis- 
played to his Parliament the two secret protests 
that he had made in prison ; he called a Council 



QUEEN OF NAVARRE. II9 

of Notables at Cognac, who voted unanimously 
against the separation of their province from 
the realm of France. The Pope, the Parliament, 
France at large, approved the non-execution of 
the treaty. '* A captive in bondage," cried 
Francis, " has no honor, and can bind himself 
to nothing." But if the province was not ceded, 
a paladin surely would have returned to his 
prison, even as John of Burgundy returned to 
London. 

" Nay," cried Francis, *' John found in Edward 
a generous conqueror, who lodged him in his 
palace, admitted him to his table, and to all the 
amusements of his court; therefore John treated 
Edward as an equal and a friend. But the 
Emperor, forgetful of our kinship, forgetting 
that prisons were made for criminals and not 
for kings, made me feel all the horrors of a dun- 
geon, and barbarously caused me to despair. 
How many times have I not told him that I had 
but the usufruct of my realm, and could not act 
without my subjects and my laws? But his 
blind cupidity has taken himself in his own 
net." 

The indignation of Charles availed little. 
Rome, England, Turkey, all sent expressions of 
their sympathy to Francis. All that Charles 
could do was to take the French attendants of 



I20 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

the little princes and send them to the galleys. 
As for the children themselves, they were safe 
in the charge of Leonor. 

Francis, at home, was King of France again, 
— King of France, but no paladin of chivalry. 
Perhaps the worshipping eyes of Margaret, who 
had so praised him for his deed of abdication, 
perplexed him now in his royal state at Fon- 
tainebleau ; or perhaps he only wished to reward 
the devoted sister who had dared so much for 
him. For some reason Francis w^ithdrew his 
opposition to the marriage of the Duchess Mar- 
garet with the King of Navarre. He showered 
presents and royal promises on his sister and 
her lover, assuring them that he would recon- 
quer the lost province of Navarre from Spain 
for Henry d'Albret. The other pretenders to 
Margaret's hand had all withdrawn. A chill 
enmity separated Charles from France ; Henry 
of England, preferring the maid to the mistress, 
had set his lustful heart upon Anne Boleyn ; 
Constable Bourbon, in this very year, was killed 
while leading his victorious armies on to the 
sack of Rome ; and on the 24th of January, 
1527, Margaret was married to the young King 
of Navarre. 

It was a strange, impoverished, beautiful king- 
dom to which Henry d'Albret took his bride in 



QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 121 

the autumn of the year, when they were weary 
of the festivals of France, — a new and almost a 
foreign country. *"I have been here five days," 
says Margaret, writing in October from Beam, 
'' and I scarce begin to understand the lan- 
guage," In the north, all round the capital of 
Nerac, stretched the dreary Landes, wastes of 
ash-colored sand, purpled here and there with 
heather, streaked with dark lines of pine-wood 
and forests of cork-oak, ended only by the hori- 
zon of the sea; miles of undulating, desolate 
heath, with here and there, cropping the scanty 
herbage, a flock of sheep guarded by a shepherd 
rudely clad in skins, — a strange figure against 
the sky as he strode over the sand and over the 
bushes on the enormous stilts the peasants use 
there. And Pau, the southern capital, was no 
less different to the placid and splendid courts 
of France, — a high-lying, steep little town, with 
a small, fortress-like castle, and beyond, the white 
serrated peaks of the Pyrenees, full of robbers 
then, and of bears and wolves, with all round, 
in the lower hills, villages where lived those 
poor and swarthy peasants whose language 
Margaret could not understand. For some 
years she did not love this sharp, foreign, moun- 
tain country ; she stayed there but for a month 
or two in the year, fleeing gladly back to 



122 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Fontainebleau, where her brother was turning the 
great hunting-lodge of the French kings into a 
summer-palace more magnificent than dreams. 

For home was still to Margaret in France. 
She had no children in her Castles of Beam. 
Her little son had died soon after birth ; her 
daughter, Jeanne, was not quite two years old 
when Francis placed the poor solemn baby in a 
castle of her own at Plessis-les-Tours, afraid to 
leave her with her parents lest Henry d'Albret 
should betroth her to a prince of Spain. Mar- 
garet was childless, and her husband was un- 
faithful. Still, after a few years' marriage her 
thoughts began to turn towards her distant sub- 
jects of Beam. 

For there was no great need of her at the 
Court of France. Leonor had come from Spain, 
bringing back the two little princes ; but she 
came home to find her husband fickle and un- 
faithful, and no disappointment is so embittered 
as that of the disillusioned idealist. The ardent, 
chivalrous Leonor was a disappointed woman. 
Still, she had a certain hold upon her husband, 
though infinitely less than belonged to pretty 
Anne de Pisseleu, now Duchess d'Estampes and 
the King's acknowledged mistress. Francis had 
these two women ; Louisa had her son, her 
political ambition, and her grandchildren ; the 



QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 1 23 

very children themselves had a new mother. 
So Margaret began to listen to the impatience 
of her husband, eager to be back among his own 
people, dumbly enraged with Francis, who had 
taken his infant daughter from him. Thus in 
the end of the year 1530 it happened that the 
King and Queen of Navarre went back into their 
own country, and ruled their kingdom from 
their Court of Nerac. 



124 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NERAC IN 1530. 

" Ci entrez, vous, qui le sainct Evangile 

En sens agile annoncez, quoi qu'on gronde. 
Ceans aurez un refuge et bastille. 



Ci entrez, vous, dames de hault parage 

En franc courage. Entrez y en bon heur 
Fleurs de beault6, k celeste visage, 
A droict corsage, a maintien preude et sage. 
En ce passage est le sejour d'honneur. 



" Ci entrez, vous, et bien soyez venus, 
Et parvenus, touts nobles chevaliers. 
Frisques, galliers, joyeux, plaisants, mignons, 
En general tous gentils compagnons." 

So runs the inscription over the door of the 
Abbey of Thelema. Whether in designing that 
perfect Court, whose motto was ** Fay ce que 
vouldras," since the virtuous wish nothing else 
but honor, whose splendor outrivalled Bonnivet 
or Chantilly, whose library contained all books 
of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and French, Spanish 
and Tuscan, where Lutheran refugees were re- 
ceived and honored, where all the ladies were 



NERAC in 1530. 125 

noble and honorable and all the knights were 
sprightly and joyous, — whether in designing 
this Abbey of Thelema, Rabelais had in mind 
the little Court of Nerac, we cannot here decide. 
Let us only say that to the Queen of Navarre, 
Esprit abstraict ravy et estatic, Rabelais dedicated 
the third book of his '* Pantagruel ; " that he 
was protected by her friends the three Du Bel- 
lays; that he was intimate with Clement Marot, 
with Etienne Dolet, with Desperriers and Calvin, 
and others of the persecuted scholars whom she 
protected. And let us own that much such a 
court as Thelema was held at the castles of 
Nerac and of Pau, — a court of scholars, of poets 
and thinkers, who fled thither from the stake or 
from the dreadful convent in pace ; a court of 
charming women at once good and gay, and of 
men as light-hearted as the King and as cour- 
teous as the Queen. 

Henry and Margaret, early estranged at heart, 
had one great interest in common, — the desire 
to improve this desolate princedom of Beam. 
Henry, at his own cost, drained and cultivated 
the sandy Landes, planted them with vineyards 
and cork-oak woods, and imported laborers 
from Saintonge. Henry built a great cloth- 
mill, and taught his subjects how to weave the 
fine Pyrennean wool they sheared from their 



126 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

mountain herds. Henry established courts of 
justice throughout his kingdom, and reformed 
the ruin and disorder into which the whole land 
had fallen ; and Margaret rebuilt the castles of 
Nerac and of Pau, and adorned them with the 
famous library that she bequeathed to Fon- 
tainebleau, founded hospitals and orphanages 
throughout her kingdom. Margaret succored 
the poor, herself visiting the sick and consol- 
ing them. Finally, she made of this nook of 
Southern France (always hostile to the power of 
Rome and even now counting its Protestants by 
thousands) a refuge for whosoever was perse- 
cuted and whosoever was poor or oppressed. 

There was much need of such an asylum, for 
the hatred of the Sorbonne towards the new 
ideas became with every month more virulent 
and more capable. In the preceding year 
(1529) Margaret herself, in continued suppli- 
cation, had been unable to save Loys Berquin, 
a learned gentleman of Artois, from the stake. 
He had been burned alive ; and the flames of 
this bonfire lit up many pale and scared faces 
throughout the whole of France. Roussel, 
Lefebvre, Calvin, Baduel, d'Arande, all her 
old friends and her masters of Meaux, Marot, 
Desperriers, Antoine Heroet, gay young poets 
and gallants in her service, suspected of heresy 



NERAC in 1530. 127 

no less than she herself, — all these and many- 
others looked to Margaret in anxious appeal. 
In settling at Nerac she made a welcome home 
for all of these. The children of her adoption 
and the children of her bearing had alike been 
taken from her. Margaret at Nerac received all 
that were exiled and all that were oppressed to 
be as her sons and her daughters. 

Queen Margaret made the exiled Roussel 
Bishop of Oloron, though he preached in lay 
dress, and in the tongue of the people. She 
had Lutheran services held in the castle. 
Calvin, Michel d'Arande, and Lefebvre she 
sheltered in her house. She paid the school- 
ing of Baduel and other young divines. Her 
court was a home and a refu£:;e for all who fled 
the wrath of the Sorbonne. Clement Marot, 
poet and Lutheran suspect, who had been her 
secretary at Alengon, was made her Gentleman 
of the Chamber at Nerac, together with Bona- 
venture Desperriers, — le joyeux Bonaventurey — 
whose atheism had brought him into almost 
equal disrepute. Thus Nerac gradually be- 
came an asylum, not only for austere re- 
formers, scholars, and thinkers, but for the 
lightest singers of airy badinage, the wittiest 
and most frivolous of men of letters. For 
all alike were suspected in the eyes of the 



128 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Sorbonne ; and, as Melanchthon wrote, ** all 
students and all scholars having the title of 
Frenchmen put their natural hope in her Ma- 
jesty as in a divinity." But the court was not 
entirely made of theologians and poets, and was 
by no means a haunt of pedants alone. Many 
charming ladies, whose names we still remem- 
ber, added a charm to the safety of that refuge, — 
ladies whom Marot celebrated in his clear, neat, 
crystalHne verses ; ladies who, at Margaret's feet, 
presided over what was virtually the last of the 
old French Courts of Love : Helene de Tournon, 
the beautiful and witty niece of the Cardinal-Min- 
ister of Francis; the gentle Florette de Sarra, 
whom Margaret loved, and whose name alone 
remains to us; and, fairest of all, Isabeau 
d'Albret, the sister of the King; ''Isabeau, 
ceste fine mouche," whose white throat and 
large eyes, whose sweet manners and girlish 
queenliness, are familiar to us even now, whose 
petit ris follastre rings still through Marot's 
verse, — Isabeau, whose love-match with M. de 
Rohan, an impoverished Breton noble, whose 
debts, disasters, and ruin made for many years 
the chief care of her kind and active sister- 
in-law. For it was Margaret who succored 
the charming, thoughtless girl in all her 
misfortunes, settled her affairs, sheltered her 



NERAC in 1530. 129 

homeless head, and brought up her children 
as they had been her own. 

Margaret had helped the match between 
Isabeau and her lover M. de Rohan. To 
Margaret Francis applied whenever the neces- 
sities of the Court required some difficult alli- 
ance, some rebellious young people to persuade, 
some ruthless parent to soften. She was a kindly 
match-maker; and though she preached implicit 
obedience to authority, she would not interfere 
between lovers. '* Between ourselves," she says, 
"■ we poor homely women understand not how 
to spoil such honest love." She was, indeed, 
the natural protectress of young people : her 
niece Madelaine, in love with the King of Scot- 
land, betrothed elsewhere ; Isabeau de Rohan, 
falling from misfortune to misfortune, till she 
becomes the poorest gentlewoman in France; 
Margaret of France, wan with grief for the 
death of her sister, the Scottish Queen ; Made- 
moiselle d'Estouteville refusing to marry a man 
who does not love her; the orphan Charlotte 
de Laval, — all these young girls, and many 
others, whose names and characters grow famil- 
iar to us through the letters of Margaret, are 
sheltered, as it were, under the folds of her 
mantle, as the virgins of Saint Ursula in the 
pictures at Cologne. 

9 



I30 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

In the refined, artificial society of Nerac old 
forms of gallantry survived and new ones were 
invented. '' For with regard to gallantry," said 
Brantome, '' this Queen knew more about it than 
about her daily bread." The romantic, mystical 
temper of Margaret, which found no pleasure in 
the actual looseness of the times, was strongly 
attracted to the semi-chivalrous rites which were 
the dangerous shadow of that laxity. The Court 
of Nerac was a veritable Puy d'amour. The 
heart no less than the soul was regent there ; 
and though Margaret had no lovers, she had 
more brothers by alliance, sons by alliance, 
platonic enthusiasts, and adoring proteges than 
any other queen in Europe : — 

*' Par alliance ay acquis une sceur 
Qui en beaute, en grace et en doulceur 
Entre ung millier ne trouve sa pareille ; 
Atissi 771071 cjie7ir a l''ay7ner s'appareille 
Mais d'^estre ay?7ie 7ie se tieiit pas bie7i seu7'.^^ 

" And SO my heart prepares to love her, but is 
not sure of being loved." This is the tenor of 
all contemporary verses rhymed to Margaret, 
whose bitter-sweet favors Jacques Pelletier de- 
plored. Marot calls her, in reproachful admira- 
tion, " La mal-mariee qui ne veult faire amy," 
and his poems to her breathe a surprised re- 
spect. But though the Queen of Navarre was 



NERAC in 1530. 131 

actually a very virtuous woman, we cannot 
but own that this dangerous atmosphere of 
Nerac, this subtle intermingling of mysticism 
and gallantry, did gradually vitiate the purity 
of her thoughts, and prepared the correspon- 
dent of Brigonnet to become the author of the 
'* Heptameron." 

The wife of Henry d'Albret, the unchilded 
mother of Jeanne, the absent sister of Francis, 
had need of such unsubstantial and flimsy affec- 
tions to stuff an unsatisfied heart. The young 
King of Navarre, eleven years younger than his 
wife, was very early tired of conjugal fidelity. 
A vain, fluent, boastful creature, with the elo- 
quent mediocrity of the Meridional, he was at 
once proud and jealous of the ascendency of 
Margaret; and more than once it needed the 
interference of Francis to persuade this agile, 
talkative, brilliant young King, with his facile 
violence and his easy repentance, to treat his 
faded wife with due respect. 

But if the home of Margaret at Nerac was 
neither quite happy nor quite free from danger- 
ous tendencies, it was a shelter for many who 
otherwise must have perished. Not entirely 
noble in itself, it was yet a radiating centre of 
benevolence and humanity. The Renaissance 
of Letters, frightened from Paris by the fires of 



132 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

the Sorbonne, took shelter in the castle there ; 
and when that refuge grew too dangerous, the 
mistress of Nerac gave her guests the means to 
travel to safer places, despatching Marot to Fer- 
rara, Calvin to Geneva, others whither was best 
for them ; sending as much as four thousand 
francs at once to the refugees in Switzerland. 
For all the artificial chivalry, the elderly philan- 
dering, which disfigured the purity of Nerac, it 
was truly the *' sojourn of honor." The young 
were safe there, the old were sheltered there. 
And this court of literary exiles was none the 
less the heart of its country; thence justice and 
law, active beneficence, wealth, and civilization 
were circulated through Bearn and Navarre, 
making of a half-savage kingdom a prosperous 
and happy place. And so this little Court of 
Nerac persuades us that a movement, — that a 
woman, intrinsically a little artificial, lax, and 
worldly, may none the less by the sheer force 
of human tenderness become the salvation of 
things nobler than itself. 



THE SORBONNE, 1 33 



CHAPTER IX. 

(1529-1535-) 
THE SORBONNE. 

No less at Fontainebleau than at N6rac, Queen 
Margaret was the patron of the Renaissance and 
the champion of the learned. She fostered the 
natural love of Francis for art and letters, and 
encouraged him to defy the restrictions and 
rigid dogma of the Sorbonne. Francis, who 
was sensitive to any interference with his king- 
ship, was easily convinced that the Sorbonne 
lessened his authority by its presumption ; and 
in such a mood his sister found it easy to per- 
suade him to found a secular college in Paris, to 
confer an eternal benefit on Learning. 

Margaret was not alone in her endeavor. Jean 
du Bellay, the younger brother of the vigilant 
Guillaume and the wise Martin, was Cardinal 
of Paris. He was suspected of a leaning to 
Reform ; it was even said that, spite of his red 
hat, he was secretly married to Madame de 
Chatillon, the excellent governess of Margaret 



134 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

He was a brilliant, adequate, and tolerant states- 
man and scholar. His influence, it is needless 
to say, with that of his two brothers, was ever 
thrown into Margaret's scale. The Renaissance 
in France had no more energetic champions 
than the three Du Bellays. 

Guillaume Bude, the great Greek scholar, who 
on his wedding-day lamented that he had but 
six hours left for study, was the librarian of 
Francis. Pedant as he was, narrow and dog- 
matic humanist, he was none the less devoted 
to the cause of learning. He did good work in 
the revival of Letters. Among other scholars, 
says a contemporary, Bude shone as the sun 
among the stars. To him, to Jean du Bellay, 
to the Queen of Navarre, Michelet gives the 
triune glory of founding the College of France. 
This is a little hard on Francis, who already in 
1 52 1 was inspired with this idea; it is, however, 
safe to say that to these three persons belongs 
the honor of infusing into the volatile king suffi- 
cient energy and hardihood to make so fine a 
thought a deed. 

Margaret, Cardinal du Bellay, Bude, — these 
were undoubtedly the guides and inspirers of 
Francis. But there was a whole public second- 
ing them, demanding their succor, crying for 
safety and legality. Paris was full of men of 



THE SORBONNE. 1 35 

learning, even as Fontainebleau of architects 
and painters. Etienne Poncher, Bishop of Paris, 
Loys de Ruze, a president of ParHament, were 
the leaders of a circle abounding in wisdom and 
enterprise. The Estiennes, the learned print- 
ers whose wives and children could all speak 
Latin, to whom is due the New Testament of 
Lefebvre d'Etaples, the first book of the Refor- 
mation, — these men, workmen and scholars at 
once, learned, heroic in their patience and labor, 
had gathered about them a society of human- 
ists and doctors, to whom they submitted the 
texts issued by their press. Lascaris the Greek, 
Oronce Finee the mathematician, Rhenanus the 
historian of Germany, Alexander Rauconet, 
Musurus, Paul Paradis, Vatable, Toussaint, 
Danes, scholars and philologists, — these men, 
who did for France what Pico and Politian 
did for Italy, gathered, as round a sanctuary 
altar, round this printing-press of the iLstiennes. 
Through them, no less than through the hu- 
mane Margaret, the brilliant Cardinal du Bellay, 
the profound Bude, it was rendered possible for 
Francis to found the College of France. 

The university was no shelter to men such as 
these. *' Grsecum est, non legitur," taught the 
Sorbonne ; '' Cette langue enfante toutes les 
heresies," preached the monks ; and if Greek, 



136 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

the tongue of pagans, were forbidden, yet more 
intolerable was Hebrew, the language of the 
Jews. To shut France close within the narrow 
fold of Rome, ignorant of any tongue but her 
own, dreaming of no glory and no ideal but the 
supremacy of the Church, — this was the aim of 
the Sorbonne. But the aim of the King was to 
throw wide every gate and break down every 
barrier; to open the East and welcome the 
learning of the Arab and the prowess of the 
Turk; to ransack the past for the guidance of 
the present ; to establish a France which should 
face the glories of Greece and Rome and not 
be abashed, — a France of palaces, peopled with 
artists and scholars, splendid in battle, yet more 
redoubtable in her invincible peace ; a Catholic 
France, which, holding one hand to Soliman, 
the other to the heretic North, should reconcile 
humanity. ^ 

For eight years the King, a true Valois, auda- 
cious in conceiving, slow in the act, had re- 
volved in his mind this glorious idea. In 1529, 
urged by Margaret and the scholars of her court, 
he gave it the first germ-like shape. No sooner 
was it founded, than far and wide through Eu- 
rope spread the fame of the brilliant secular 
College of France. Year by year, as its fame 
and its students increased, chairs and endow- 



THE SORBONNE. 1 37 

ments were added to the first poor foundation. 
In 1529, the College begins with a professor of 
Greek and one of Hebrew, — that is all By 
1530, two chairs for Greek, two for Hebrew, 
one for mathematics. In 1534, Latin follows; 
medicine and philosophy in 1540; these are 
quickly succeeded by endowments for juris- 
prudence, for Arabic and Syriac. Physiology, 
the rights of man, the East, — these are the 
doors opened by the new secular college. In 
these twelve years the destiny of the genius of 
France is decided, the character of France has 
shown its bent. 

To this impulse the Sorbonne opposed itself 
with violence and fury. *' If we may believe 
our masters " says the contemporary " Histoire 
Ecclesiastique," " to study Greek and to meddle, 
let it be never so little, with Hebrew, is one of 
the greatest heresies of the world." And Henri 
Estienne, in his apology for Herodotus, com- 
plains that Greek and even Latin are esteemed 
*' lutheranifiques et heretifiques." To such an 
extent, he adds, that Master Beda, in the pres- 
ence of King Francis, first of the name, retorted 
to the late Guillaume Bude that Hebrew and 
Greek would be the source of many heresies. 
In this way learning and science were tabooed 
as Lutheran. It is necessary to insist upon this 



138 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

point in order to understand the ferocity of the 
Sorbonne ; in order to appreciate the motive 
which, for the moment, fused the Renaissance 
with the Reformation. These humanists and 
pioneers, for the most part Jewish or foreign of 
origin, professed the Reformed faith as an ex- 
cuse for lax Cathohcism. On the other hand, 
the most earnest souls in France looked to the 
New Ideas as an escape from the degrading 
laxities, the soulless unmeaning of sixteenth- 
century religion. They hoped for purification 
and reform in the Church itself, while the 
Patriots desired to see the restriction of the 
temporal power of Rome ; both wished to de- 
centralize the Church, to restore the Galilean 
branch to its old national position. All these 
different strains of dissent were firmly welded 
into one by the ignorant persecution of the 
Sorbonne. But this movement was not yet 
Protestant; it was still very practical, very 
undefined, little concerned with theories or 
ideas. *' Thank heaven," cries Margaret, " we 
are none of us Sacramentarians ! " To estab- 
lish secular education, print the Bible in French, 
teach Greek and Mathematics, sustain the Gal- 
ilean branch, — this is the programme of the 
movement; this, and no actual schism. Bri- 
gonnet, Roussel, the Du Bellays, Margaret, did 



THE SORBONNE. 139 

not desire or dream of a Church wholly sev- 
ered from the Catholic authority. It was a 
sort of Home Rule which they demanded, — 
to be Catholics, but reformed and Galilean 
Catholics. It was in truth Calvin the French- 
man, Calvin the man of system and practice, 
and not Luther the German, the mystic and 
prophet, who organized and consolidated the 
Protestant Church. 

This point must never be forgotten in seeking 
to understand the history of Margaret of An- 
gouleme. That life, else so hopelessly confused, 
so vacillating and effortless, becomes clear and 
definite when once we understand that not the 
Reformation but the Renaissance inspired it. 
Never was a spirit less dogmatic or insistent 
than hers. She was no martyr, no saint or 
prophetess. She was merely a woman filled 
by the new fervor for learning, the new rever- 
ence for knowledge, the renascent love for art 
and poetry, no less than for ideas and for 
science. Under one wing she shelters Janet, 
Cellini, Marot, Desperriers ; under the other, 
Calvin and Vatable. Full of imagination and 
keen intelligence, instinct with compassion and 
liberality, her nature would have been as much 
revolted by narrow Protestant dogma as by 
Catholic tyranny. Read the contemporary 



HO MARGARET OF ANCOULEME. 

Lutheran historians, and it is clear that the 
ignorance and brutal injustice were not entirely 
upon the side of the Sorbonne. Coarseness and 
violence were as rife at Geneva as at Paris, and 
Margaret would not have been happy in Calvin's 
City of God. She would have pitied Servetus 
as sorely as she pitied Loys de Berquin. Her 
rare and modern spirit would ill have understood 
that hard-and-fast salvation of Geneva, that sat- 
isfaction in the damnation of disbelievers. Hu- 
man life, knowledge, tolerance, and freedom 
were dearer to her than any code or any creed. 
In fact, her code and her creed was her belief 
in these things ; her practice of human kindness. 
Those dying words of hers, so hushed-up, so 
indignantly refuted, express the principle of 
her life, -— '' What I have done I did from com- 
passion, not conviction." 

At this moment, let us remember, Calvin is 
still in France, a youth of twenty ; his "" Insti- 
tutio " is not written, Geneva is not yet a Church, 
Protestantism still is undetermined. » Margaret 
and her court of scholars personify the ear- 
lier, vaguer Reformation. Mystical and learned, 
eager to discover the secrets of heaven and 
earth, they were more anxious to learn than to 
proselytize ; and the College of France is the 
Church that they established. 



THE SORBONNE. I41 

It is important to insist on this eclectic and 
cultured moment of the Reformation, because 
Margaret never outgrew it, and was condemned 
as an apostate by the later Protestants, who had 
advanced, merely for standing still. On the 
other hand, exasperated by the growth of her- 
esy, the Court receded from its tolerant position; 
so that Margaret, who at this moment touches 
Calvin, as it were, on one hand and the Court 
on the other, is gradually left at equal distance 
from either, suspected on both sides of half- 
heartedness and heresy. 

This is indeed the climax of her influence, 
the most brilliant moment of her career. From 
among her servants and her masters are sought 
the staff of the College of France. Toussaint 
and Danes had taught her a little Greek; it is 
said that Paul Paradis had given her lessons in 
Hebrew. Henri Estienne was under her pro- 
tection no less than Vatable, Lascaris, and 
Aleander. Marot, the Lutheran poet, her valet- 
de-chambre^ is intrusted to rewrite in modern 
French the ancient masterpieces of the quickly 
growing language. She is the centre of the 
movement; the King himself is under her in- 
fluence. The Sorbonne, made keen by hate 
and fear, raises its threatening head, observes, 
and considers how to strike. 



142 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

To strike was only self-preservation, so bold 
and rapid became the impulse towards reform. 
In December, 1530, the Protestant princes of 
Germany entered into a league and signed the 
Treaty of Smalcald. England was on the point 
of actual revolt from the Roman sway, and 
France seemed like to do as much. The Em- 
peror no less than the Sorbonne dreaded lest 
Francis should join the Protestant league; for 
the new ideas received every encouragement in 
Paris, and in September, 1531, it seemed as if 
the last check were removed with the death of 
Louisa of Savoy. While she had lived, the 
Catholic party had trusted to her influence on 
her son and daughter, who passionately loved 
her; but now the innovating Margaret, unre- 
strained by her mother, would sit, sole in 
influence, at the right hand of the King. 

For an end had come to the passionate life of 
Madame. Her genius for intrigue, her schem- 
ing avarice, her intense and active nature, lay 
idle in the grave. She was loath to quit the 
stage on which she played so principal a part ; 
all her sufferings had not reconciled her to the 
thought of rest. Constantly ill, never free from 
gout and colic, she was still resolved to act, to 
witness. But throughout the summer of 1531, 
Margaret's letters reveal to us the gradual wasting 



THE SORBONNE. 143 

of the frame which contains this violent spirit. 
'' She is not yet so strong as I desire." " Ma- 
dame was yesterday so weak, I feared she would 
have fainted." " She is so variable." Margaret 
says no more than that in her fear to alarm her 
brother. But though she refrains from afflicting 
him more openly, she writes of nothing but her 
mother's health. To-day she is better, she had 
a good night, she will certainly recover ; yet, ah ! 
sometimes she seems so weak ! Turning from 
the fierce history of those times, in which Mar- 
garet's gentle name, like a wing-bound dove, is 
bandied as a missile from one party to another, 
there is nothing more pathetic than to open the 
volume of her letters, to read these lines breath- 
ing love and anxiety, from which all else is ban- 
ished, all hint of speculation, all interest in great 
affairs, to perceive this Lutheran heretic, hushed, 
self-unconscious, gentle, sitting by the bedside of 
the Catholic mother she adores, and gazing with 
anguish into the paling, dying face. 

The death of Louisa gave a swift impetus to 
the movement of reform. 

In 1533, Robert Estienne printed his Latin 
Bible. In the same year a cooper's son from 
Noyon, a certain young Chauvin (or Calvinus, 
as he latinized the name), a Picard bourgeois, 
strong, hard, dogmatic, litigious, had composed 



144 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

a book, as yet only known in manuscript, — the 
" Institutio Christianse Religionis." It was au- 
daciously dedicated to the King, and bore the 
motto : " Non veni mittere pacem, sed gladium." 
The Rector of the Sorbonne preached a sermon 
by this young Calvin to his scandalized magis- 
ters. What ! was the heresy infesting their very 
stronghold? The imprudent Rector had to fly 
for his life to Switzerland. A warrant was 
issued against him ; , another against the ob- 
noxious Calvin, who, less agile, was run to 
earth at Angouleme. Now let the Lutherans 
and Zwinghans behold to what ends led their 
monstrous opinions ! Parliament, Sorbonne, all 
good Catholics, prepared for the Auto and the 
triumph, when, at the last moment, their prey 
was wrested from them : Margaret, the perni- 
cious Queen of Navarre, threw herself down 
before the King and entreated his pardon for 
Calvin. It was granted. 

She was verily the head and front of the 
offending, this light-minded, mystical, learned 
young Queen of Navarre. At all costs, she 
must be warned, crushed, superseded. A little 

A 

before this she had published at Alengon a 
poem, weak, mystical, inflated with a vague 

A 

ideality, — " Le Myrouer de I'Ame Pecheresse." 
It would be hard, in this mist of nebulous piety, 



THE SORBONNE. 1 45 

to name precisely any error of commission ; but 
the Sorbonne, supremely irritated against Mar- 
garet, discovered therein divers heresies of omis- 
sion. There was no mention of the Saints in it, 
neither of Purgatory ; the prayer to the Virgin, 
the Salve Regiiia, was paraphrased in honor of 
Jesus Christ. Here the prompt and aggressive 
Beda perceived his opportunity. In the next 
Index of the works forbidden to the faithful, 
the Sorbonne published the title of the " My- 

A 

rouer de I'Ame Pecheresse." 

All this took place in 1533. Francis, ever 
devoted to his sister, still devoted to the cause 
of progress and tolerance, ruminating an alli- 
ance with Soliman and the Protestant League, 
was thunderstruck with indignation. He sent 
for the Rector of the Sorbonne and ordered a 
complete list to be made of those magisters 
who had composed the Index. He caused the 
Bishop of Senlis to defend the work before the 
University, which meekly retracted its accusa- 
tion. The occasion was made into a triumph 
for Margaret. 

Beda and his party were not silenced yet. A 
few weeks after this the students and four pro- 
fessors of the theological college of the Navar- 
rene Fathers at Paris publicly performed a farce 
in the great hall of the building. Margaret was 

10 



146 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

the heroine of this ingenious representation. 
In the first act she is represented as leaving 
her spindle and letting fall her distaff, to accept 
from an Infernal Fury a French translation of 
the four Gospels ; Margaret then becomes her- 
self a Fury, a spirit of controversy and bitter- 
ness, devoured by insensate tyranny, infected 
with the cruelty of Hell. Such was the move- 
ment of the play; such the portrait of the 
endearing and sweet-hearted sister of the King. 
Francis was terribly incensed. He sent the four 
Navarrene Fathers to the prison of the Concier- 
gerie, whence only at Margaret's most earnest 
intercession they were, after some days, set 
free. Beda suffered at greater length. Suspi- 
cious, either that the farce was performed at his 
instigation, or else that he was actually the 
author of it, the King sentenced the combative 
syndic to two years of exile. 

The Sorbonne w^as in despair. It did, indeed, 
appear impossible to assail this high-throned 
heretic ; moreover, the exile of Beda struck 
their weapon from their hands. For a while all 
was quiet. Then an event occurred to set the 
Protestants hopelessly in the wrong. Whether 
laid in train by the coarser and more blundering 
Reformers, or the fruit of unscrupulous Catholic 
zeal, none may decide. 



THE SORBONNE. 147 

During the night of the i8th of October, 1534, 
the doors of the cathedral and town-halls of 
Paris, Rouen, Meaux, and other cities, even to 
the gates of the Castle of Amboise where was 
the King, were covered with placards assail- 
ing in the grossest terms the mysteries of the 
Catholic faith, denying the Mass, the Host, the 
prayers for the dead, — whatever was held most 
mystical and sacred. Nothing could be more 
brutal than the feeling which prompted this 
offence, unless it be the feeling which punished 
it. All that was tender and holy was publicly 
outraged here, — the mysterious sacrifice of the 
Mass, the faith that rescued the dear but sinful 
dead from the pains of Purgatory. More than 
this. In Paris there stood an image of the 
Mother and Child, held especially venerable 
and beloved. Many prayers were addressed to 
this succorable Madonna; her image in the 
public street brought to the roughest heart a 
reminder of gentleness and purity. This dawn 
of the 19th of October shone upon a desecrated 
shrine. The head of the Virgin, the head of 
the Babe, had been rudely chopped from the 
trunks, and lay, fallen and mutilated, in the 
gutter. When the King heard of it, he burst 
into tears. That cruel blunder, that heartless 
revenge, lost the cause of the Reform. Many 



148 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

a stake should smoke, and many a rack should 
strain and creak, in expiation for that murdered 
stone. 

This affair of the placards sent a horror puls- 
ing throughout the length and breadth of 
France. It frightened from the Reform its 
gentler and more reverent adherents. Margaret 
herself, ever compassionate, felt it necessary to 
declare her Catholicism to the world. Francis 
henceforth became no less combative than the 
Sorbonne itself. He set out at once for Paris 
to sift the matter. No sooner had he reached 
the capital than in the space of a single night 
the placards burst out again in hideous flower. 
They were on all the buildings, all the churches. 
Even into the King's cabinet they brought their 
obscene and scurrilous defiance. A vague fear 
and horror took possession of the town. All 
through France throbbed that sense of outraged 
pity for the murdered Redeemer which lay at 
the bottom of mediaeval persecution, blent with 
that maddening terror of Supernatural Evil, 
which gave their keenest edge to the cruelties 
that punished witchcraft. Heresy was, indeed, 
a sort of witchcraft, a spell wasting the souls of 
men before the fires of Hell, even as the grosser 
witches knew how to make men's bodies melt 
and wane. It is difficult now to place ourselves 



THE SORBONNE. 149 

in this attitude; yet, unless we do so, we can 
never understand the lesson of the past. 

When the King heard of the Virgin's mutilated 
image, he burst, as I have said, into tears. But 
his anger was not to end in weeping. A severe 
inquiry was instituted, and all accused of com- 
plicity in this matter were brought to Paris and 
tried there. The party of the Sorbonne pre- 
tended that they had discovered a Protestant 
plot to murder all good Catholics while at Mass. 
Nothing can be less founded than such a charge, 
obviously trumped up to secure a conviction. 
Without it the conviction was secure. Twenty- 
four of the accused were sentenced to be burnt 
to death. 

On the 29th of January, 1535, a great expia- 
tory procession traversed Paris from the Louvre 
to the Church of Notre Dame. The King 
walked in this procession, bareheaded, holding 
in his hand a lighted torch. He was followed 
by his children and the flower of his Court. 
His beautiful mistress was there, with Queen 
Leonor and many fair and joyous ladies ; but 
Margaret had returned to Navarre. She had 
left Paris, heavy-hearted, some weeks before, 
seeing, as it seemed, all her dreams of wide 
culture, beneficence, and toleration crumble 
suddenly into nothing, and the old reign of 



ISO MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Darkness engulf the world once more. Indeed, 
on that morning of the 2 ist of January, 1535, the 
Renaissance, the College of France, the treaty 
with the Turks, appeared shocking and anoma- 
lous ; for Paris had returned to medisevalism. 
It might have been Louis XL and not King 
Francis who walked there bareheaded, holding 
his lighted torch. To the sound of solemn 
chants, the procession wound through the 
streets. Not only the Court was there, and the 
King and Queen, and the two hundred gentle- 
men of the royal household, but the whole Sor- 
bonne (triumphant over the absent Queen of 
Navarre), the clergy of Paris, the Swiss Guards, 
the Heralds, the Court of Parliament, the Muni- 
cipality, the Guilds of Capital, the Courts of the 
Realm. It was a procession of several thousand 
persons, all alike in their pity and their burning 
indignation, that marched from the Louvre to 
Notre Dame. When we realize this, we under- 
stand the sequel ; we understand how little yet, 
for all its brilliant veneer of culture, France was 
impregnate with the true modern spirit. The 
Middle Ages were reared up close behind, and 
their tremendous shadows fell across that world 
to darken it. 

At Notre Dame there was High Mass; thence 
the procession moved to the Bishop's palace, 



THE SORBONNE, 151 

where, seated on a throne, the King addressed 
the multitude. In his words, burning, thriUing 
with mediaeval passion, we catch no echo of the 
familiar speech of the Father of Letters. The 
debonair, free-thinking dilettante of the Re- 
naissance has disappeared ; the mutilated image 
of the Virgin has roused in his place the latent 
fanatic, present ever behind the most modern 
shows of the double-natured sixteenth century. 
Louis the Saint or Louis the Cruel might have 
spoken as he spoke. So easily a strong passion 
refutes the painful progress of centuries. 

The multitude stood in the hall and in the 
court outside; the King on his raised throne 
spoke to them, the tears in his eyes. He spoke 
of the blasphemy and profanation, and of that 
day's expiation. He denounced the enemies of 
God and the Church. " And if my own right 
arm," he cried at last, *' were infected with this 
heretic pestilence, I would cut it off and cast it 
from me ; and if one of my own children were 
so miserable as to favor it, I would with my 
own hand sacrifice him to God's justice and 
my own." 

Ominous words for the absent and suspected 
Queen of Navarre. The Sorbonne, listenmg, 
must have triumphed ; for those wise magisters 
did not yet know how volatile were the moods 



152 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

of their brilliant King. For the moment there 
was no more fiery Cathohc than Francis. He 
went himself, with the ladies of his Court, with 
the fervent outraged Leonor and the laughing 
Madame d'Etampes, to see them light the pile 
where six of the accused should suffer that even- 
ing. Throughout December the Autos had 
flamed and smoked ; already ten Lutherans had 
died that winter at the stake. In general they 
suffered singly; but to honor so tremendous an 
occasion, no less than six could die. 

** Three Lutherans," says the Bourgeois of 
Paris, ^' and a clerk of the Chatelet, and a fruit- 
erer, and the wife of a cobbler, and a school- 
master, — this last for eating meat on Fridays," 
— these were to be the victims. They were fas- 
tened by long iron chains to a lofty gibbet, and 
swung to and fro in and out of the burning fire. 
Madame d'Etampes is said to have complained 
of the sickening odor of the burning flesh; of 
the horrible sight of the convulsed and black- 
ened bodies. Poor, easy-natured Anne de Pisse- 
leu, yourself suspected of Lutheran leanings, the 
spectacle may well have turned you faint with 
fear and horror ! But the Bourgeois of Paris 
does not mention the presence of the King at 
the actual sacrifice. The Court, I incline to 
believe, turned home before it came to that. 



THE SOR BONNE. 1 53 

Throughout the spring the stakes are con- 
stantly piled, the gibbets swing their smoking 
freight to and fro. And whereas in the earlier 
months the victims were humble and ignorant 
folk, as time goes on we note a richer prey. 
In November '' a cobbler's son," *' a printer," 
*' a mason," '' a tailor," *' a young servant: " in 
such wise run the entries. But in the spring : 
'\ a rich merchant, from fifty to sixty years of 
age, estime homme de bien^' *' a goldsmith," 
'* a painter," " a young Italian merchant," "■ a 
scholar," " one of the King's choristers," " an 
attorney." Here it is the middle class that is 
attacked. 

Nor was this all. Not only life but reason 
was menaced. On the 26th of February the 
King suspended the action of the Press. No 
more books were to be printed ; so ordained 
the friend and patron of the Estiennes, the 
Founder of the College of France. But the 
thing was impossible ; France could no longer 
live, work, pursue her daily affairs, without the 
Press. Not only Jean du Bellay and the learned 
Bude, but even the reactionary Parliament pro- 
tested against so grotesque a prohibition. The 
King was content with imposing a censorship 
of the Press. 

So com.pletely had Francis turned upon his 



154 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

steps. Perhaps we find the reason in the fact 
that Beda, the intrepid Beda, returned from ex- 
ile in 1535, accused the King himself of leaning 
towards heresy. Francis threw the rash syndic 
into prison again; obliged him to do public 
penance, in a sheet and holding a candle ; 
finally confined him in the prison of Mont St. 
Michel, where the cutting winds and stormy 
weather of the ensuing spring cooled forever 
the fiery heart of Beda. But Francis, though 
avenged, was not appeased. A horror of his 
own laxity was upon him. Still the persecution 
continued, till finally the Protestants of Germany 
complained of his rigor towards unfortunates 
whose only crime was professing the religion 
which they themselves, the King's allies, be- 
lieved. They also deplored the rumored alliance 
between Francis and Soliman. The King's an- 
swer has been preserved. He, to some extent, 
admits a friendly intention towards the Porte, 
acknowledging that he had received the Turkish 
Ambassador. The Emperor, he reminds them, 
had done as much ; and it is well to abstain 
from war with the Turk. As for the penalties 
he had, against his will and nature, inflicted on 
his Lutheran subjects, it was rather their sedi- 
tion than their religion which he had punished. 
So little objection had the King to the convic- 



THE SORBONNE, 155 

tions of his allies, that he would willingly receive 
any theologian that they might choose to send 
to his Court. 

This is in the summer of 1535. Another 
wind blows, and the weathercock King has 
veered from his pathos and horror of January. 
On the eve of a new war with the Emperor, 
Francis desires to conciliate the German princes. 
His keen and subtle political instinct recalls him 
from the dreary paths of Spain. 



156 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 



CHAPTER X. 

(1536-1538-) 
CHANGES. 

On the field of Pavia, Francis had sent his ring 
to SoHman. The King had established the Col- 
lege of France, in spite of the Sorbonne. In 
defiance of the Church, he had endowed two 
chairs of Greek. In founding two Professor- 
ships of Hebrew, he had taken its reproach and 
its squalor from the Ghetto. The Jews, the 
learned, these two persecuted and endangered 
peoples he had glorified and reassured. In 
sending his ring to Soliman, Francis embraced 
the last enemy of mediaeval Christendom, — the 
Turk. 

In the Turk Francis perceived the one ally 
that could truly aid him against the Emperor. 
Venice, the enlightened eye of Europe, already 
perceived the undue predominance of Austria, 
and saw in Soliman the natural balance. With 
Venice, whose trade required the Porte ; with 
England, whom the Church no more controlled ; 
with Scotland, Denmark, and the Saxon princes. 



CHANGES. 157 

France might head a formidable confederation, 
a capital danger to the Empire and the Inquisi- 
tion. Such a league was the dream of the 
sixteenth century, from the Battle of Pavia in 
1525 to the renewed project of Spires in 1573. 
But, as a rule, the Christian princes were as 
parochial in their hatred of the East as in their 
yet bitterer hatred of Christian heresy. The 
Catholic hated the Turk and the Huguenot, 
the Huguenot the Catholic and the Turk. It 
was the merit of Francis to rise above sectarian 
considerations, to propose a great political aUi- 
ance between the Protestant North, and Catho- 
lic Venice, and Catholic France, and Mohamme- 
dan Turkey. Such an alliance would have been 
the last word, the greatest masterpiece of the 
Renaissance. Humanity, tolerance, freedom of 
judgment, would have been naturalized thereby 
in Europe, and the dreadful history of the seven- 
teenth century might have had a different record. 
But the thing was difficult beyond belief, for 
each State suspected the other, and all alike sus- 
pected Soliman. He was reckoned, as in their 
State-papers England and Spain and Germany 
alike conspire to name him, " the Turk, the 
Common Enemy." Francis would find it no 
easy task to make the most enlightened king- 
doms of Europe accept his alliance. 



158 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

For great and deep spread the horror of the 
Turk. Venice was too wise, England too far, to 
share it, save in a nominal and intermittent fash- 
ion ; but in Germany the dread of Soliman was 
as natural and fierce as superstition. Nor was 
this wholly an unreasonable fear. Selim was 
dead and gone, and in these later days the Otto- 
mans themselves were admirably well disci- 
plined and merciful. In 1526 two hundred 
thousand Turks traversed the Empire; they 
marched along the roads, avoiding the fields 
lest they should ruin the harvest. Not a vil- 
lage was burned, not a hamlet plundered. Any 
soldier caught in the act of pillage was hung to 
the trees by the roadside, whatsoever his rank 
or station. In 1532 Captain Rincon, the envoy 
of Francis, visited the prodigious camp of 
Soliman, thirty miles in extent. ''Astonishing 
order, no violence. Merchants, women even, 
coming and going in perfect safety, as in a 
European town. Life as safe, as large and 
easy as in Venice. Justice so fairly adminis- 
tered that one is tempted to believe the Turks 
are turned Christians now, and the Christians 
Turks." 

The Turks themselves were just, wise, moder- 
ate, and humane. But alas ! the Turkish armies 
were not all composed of Turks. The fierce 



CHANGES. 159 

Algerian pirates, slave-dealers, kidnappers of 
boys and women, were the allies of Soliman, 
The terrible Khair-Eddin Barbarossa bore the 
title of Turkish Admiral. This should have 
been the double and exacting task of Francis : 
to reassure Europe against the Turk, to secure 
Soliman while excluding Barbarossa. 

The first step on this errand he had taken on 
the morrow of his capture at Pavia, when, draw- 
ing from his finger his last possession, he had 
said to his attendant, " Take this to the Sultan !" 
The second step was passed in this year 
1536, when, on the eve of battle with Charles, 
Francis signed a secret treaty with Soliman. 
The third step, the open acknowledgment and 
precision of that treaty, was still to be taken, 
if ever it should be taken. 

'* The Venetians are nowe al Turkiche and 
alienated from th' Emperour utterly," writes 
Harvel, so late as the spring of 1539 ; " and I am 
of constant opinion that the French State seketh 
to perturbate the world in th' Emperour's detri- 
ment." Indeed, while Francis and Rincon and 
Du Bellay were welding the French treaty with 
the Turk, the Queen of Navarre was as busily 
employed in seeking to bring England into a 
French alliance. She herself interviewed the 
EngHsh Ambassadors, and in our collection of 



l6o MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Foreign State-papers her name is at least as 
frequently quoted as the King's. ''The Queen 
of Navarre is a right English woman," said 
Francis to Sir William Paget. *• She is always 
a member of the King's Secret Council," writes 
Matteo Dandolo, Venetian Ambassador in 
France, *' and therefore is obhged to follow the 
King wherever he goes, though narrow and in- 
convenient be her lodgings." 

It was a hard life ; but Margaret was happy 
in this career of active and beneficent devotion. 
In these years of work and counsel her letters 
are brilliant and contented, — letters of how differ- 
ent a sort to those inspired by the quietism of her 
youth (i 520-1 524), the unrest and superstition 
of her age (i 547-1 548). In this year 1536, 
while the question of the Turco-Huguenot alli- 
ance was filling the secret councils of France, 
war fell out again with the Emperor on the old 
question of the Milanese. The Queen of Navarre 
was now, perhaps, the busiest woman in France. 
Her letters are full of the details of the cam- 
paign. She encourages her husband and his 
kinsmen to raise experienced regiments for the 
war; she inspects the troops with her cousin 
De Carman ; she goes to suppress a rising of 
the disaffected Basques; she and Montpezat 
discover and interrogate a spy. And all the 



CHANGES. l6l 

time she is investigating the ruined fortunes of 
Isabeau de Rohan ; she is securing the advance- 
ment of her old playmate, Anne de Montmo- 
rency; she is assisting her husband, and sound- 
ing his trumpet in the ears of Francis. 

Henry of Navarre, in his quality of Governor 
of Guyenne, raised an army and led it to the 
southern frontier. Margaret's letters to Mont- 
morency (very frequent at this moment) are full 
of allusions to her young husband, to his valor, 
his troops. We see in her mind the happy con- 
trast that she makes between this eager service 
of the brave young King of Navarre and the 
cowardice and failure of the husband of her 
youth. Margaret, we feel, is no less anxious 
than her brother to wipe out, on a fresh field, 
the disgraces of Pavia. She writes to Mont- 
morency, — 

" I have had news of your soldier, the King of Na- 
varre. He is, I fancy, on the march, for he has deter- 
mined to depart without going to Bayonne ; for by this 
time he has the letters in which I told him that the Em- 
peror is at hand, and that you await him at the camp 
of Avignon. I am sure he will not fail you there. I 
pray you, my son, that you will hold him as a brother, 
for I am sure that you will find his love so good and firm 
that you will not repent you for having taken him to 
your heart." 

II 



1 62 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

The preparation for the campaign went on 
with enthusiasm. The army in Piedmont met 
with brilliant success. The camp on the frontier 
was impatient for battle. Margaret writes to 
the King, — ■ 

" My Lord, I came yesterday evening to this place 
of Monfrin (near Avignon), where is the division of 
the King of Navarre, which I have seen in battle 
array. I will say nothing of the men-at-arms ; but 
there are few soldiers better mounted than our light 
horse. You will be pleased with the Gascons ; and 
would to God the Emperor would try to cross the 
Rhone while I am here ! for, with the succor you mean 
to send us (and but httle is necessary !) I would 
gladly undertake, on my life, — mere woman though I 
be, — to keep him from passing." 

The Emperor did not pass. His armies 
starved and thirsted on the devastated frontier. 
Victory attended the arms of the French ; but , 
Death, the faithful retainer, fought now, as ever, 
upon the Emperor's side. The war shrank into 
insignificance beside a blow that, not without 
suspicion of treason, changed the future of 
France. 

For the young Dauphin, Francis, the idol of 
his father, the heir of the kingdom, suddenly 
died. He was sailing 'down the Rhone to join 
the King in the camp at Valence. He broke 



CHANGES. 163 

his journey at Lyons, and there, one day, being 
overheated from a game of tennis, he sent his 
page to draw him a cup of water from a well. 
It is probable the young prince succumbed to a 
violent pleurisy. But when he died that night 
in extremity of torture, all France declared that 
Montecuculi, the Dauphin's cup-bearer, had 
smeared some Spanish poison of the Emperor's 
upon the edges of the cup. 

More than mourning and anger were to come 
of this event. The Dauphin, Francis, had been, 
in mind as well as in body, singularly his father's 
child. He was of Francis's party, — gay, chival- 
ric, gallant, perhaps unstable, liberal, easy. 
But Henry, the second son, was now the heir. 
The unusual character of this youth of eighteen 
made him already remarkable at Court. Henry 
was taciturn, sardonic, melancholy. Says Mat- 
teo Dandolo, — 

"He seems all nerve, he is so strong and tall. But 
he is dark, pallid, livid, — even green ; and it is said he 
was never seen to laugh a hearty laugh. Still, he is, 
in his way, a good companion to his own friends, and 
loves the liveliness of his younger brother. He has 
a small head, large eyes looking down, thin temples, 
and a narrow forehead. He is brave, and loves hunt- 
ing and fighting ; and he is very religious, and will not 
ride on Sundays." 



1 64 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Another Venetian ambassador adds a stroke 
or two to the portrait : — 

" He is melancholy, saying little, and devoid of repar- 
tee ; but when once he has said a thing he holds to it 
7no7'dicus, for he is very clear and decided as to his 
opinions. He has a mediocre and rather slow intelH- 
gence. He is virtuous and reputable, and spends his 
money liberally but wisely." 

** II est ne Saturnien," says Simon Renard ; 
and truly the star of Saturn sheds its singular 
and pallid radiance upon his course. As a 
child his father had not loved him. *' Je n'aime 
pas," he had said, '' les enfans songeards, sour- 
daudz et endormis." And dreamy, dull, and 
sleepy were still the manners of the Prince. 
Four years of his childhood had passed in the 
Spanish castle where he had been a hostage for 
the brilliant father who did not love him ; and it 
was his destiny that he should henceforth detest 
the land of his captivity and make war upon it, 
while he himself was imbued with the spirit of it, 
while he himself should turn the volatile, spon- 
taneous Gallic character of his father's France 
into a thing as pallid, as precise, as decorous, 
as the Emperor's Spain. Under him the long 
reign of the Style soutemi begins in Art and 
Letters. He is slow, solemn, romantic, and 



CHANGES. 165 

yet conventional. In his long straight nose, his 
fine anxious brows, his singular large eyes, we 
see the evidence of a certain ideality, but no 
power to direct it " A saturnine," says Simon 
Renard ; and another calls him, '* a King of 
Lead." He is, indeed, save when in battle or 
following the hunt, an inert and sombre youth, 
with his crooked, sinister mouth, his black, 
straight hair, his lustreless, black eyes. 

In 1533 the King, anxious to conciliate the 
Papacy, had married Henry to the heiress of 
Florence and Urbino, the Pope's niece, Cathe- 
rine dei Medici, a plump child of fourteen, 
with full lips, large eyes, a retreating chin, — a 
certain vulgar prettiness. She had caressing, 
charming manners, that made every one at 
Court in love with her — except her sombre 
young husband, with his solemn air of a Span- 
ish grandee, unapproachable and noble. For 
him his little bride, during her whole life, cher- 
ished a devoted passion, that was, perhaps, the 
only lovable thing in her career. But Henry 
was at first supremely disgusted with his mar- 
riage. Her quickness in pastimes, her lively 
manners, her neat-ankled prettiness, could not 
make him overlook the trading ancestry of his 
bride. Twenty years later the Venetian Am- 
bassadors inform us that all the Court of France 



l66 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

looked down on Catherine because she was not 
of royal blood : — 

"She can never do them favors enough. If she 
gave away the whole of France, they would scarcely 
thank her, because she is a foreigner; and she has 
neidier credit nor authority, since she is not of royal 
birth." 

'' Bah ! it is only the shopkeeper's daughter ! " 
said Madame Diane to the little Queen of Scots, 
more than twenty years after this. And, in- 
deed, though a good enough match for the 
Duke of Orleans, little Catherine dei Medici, 
not beautiful even at seventeen, was doubtless 
made to feel herself a very poor alliance for 
the heir of France, '* They have smirched the 
Valois lilies with a mercantile alliance ! " cried 
the Emperor. Henry was ashamed of his wife, 
and did not love her. As time went on, and 
the plain, bourgeoise, unlovely girl did not even 
give him an heir, he began to think of a di- 
vorce. But all the pride and all the real love 
of Catherine's heart arose and pleaded against 
him with King Francis ; and Henry was finally 
brought to reason by a very great lady with 
whom he was in love, — Diana of Poictiers, the 
widow of the great Seneschal of Normandy, and 
the daughter of that Saint Vallier who had 



CHANGES. 167 

nearly perished for the conspiracy of Bourbon. 
This most important and almost princely per- 
sonage, though she called Catherine a daughter 
of shopkeepers, persuaded Henry to treat her 
better, and even to reward her with a moderate 
affection. 

" It is wonderful how Madame la Seneschale 
has made another man of him," says Marcus 
.Cavalli. " He used not to love his wife at all, 
but was vain and full of mockery." 

For Diana of Poictiers had an almost bound- 
less influence over Henry. She was no longer 
young. At the time when Montmorency brought 
her and Henry together in his house at Ecouen, 
she was thirty-eight and he not quite eighteen 
years old. Every one said that Henry would 
never fall in love ; but Montmorency divined 
better. He determined to attach the young 
Prince to this woman, twenty years his senior, 
who was of Montmorency's party, ™ a Catholic 
among Catholics, a Conservative, hating the 
Turco-Huguenot alliance, and hating Spain 
also, though filled with the spirit of Spain. 
Diana was still a very beautiful woman. Her 
abundant hair, jet-black and curly (sometimes 
she dyed it red), made a frame for a pallid, 
delicate face, beautiful with that peculiar Re- 
naissance beauty, so illustrious and strange, 



l68 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

which affects the imagination more strongly 
than the senses. Her Hds were a Httle tight 
over the eyes ; the small, close-shutting lips 
tight also ; the straight, small nose prominent 
in profile ; the delicate eyebrows arched and 
tense above the well-set eyes ; the forehead 
round; the neck beautiful but slender; the 
whole face secret, unemotional, unexpressive, 
yet most provoking to the imagination. 

The whiteness of her pale complexion was a 
special beauty of la grande Seneschale. In 
some sort, her life was devoted to preserve it 
Every morning she arose at early dawn, and 
bathed herself, winter and summer alike, with 
icy water. Then, by the light of the daybreak, 
she went riding through the fields round Paris, 
or in the woods at Fontainebleau. Before the 
world awoke she was at home again, reading in 
her bed till noon. Then began her regular life 
of a great lady at Court, resolved to marry well 
her little daughters, resolved to keep her power 
as a beauty, to make herself a power in politics. 
Later on, we know that all the secrets of the 
State were debated in her house at Anet Even 
then, we may be sure, no secret of the Catholic 
party was kept from her; and as soon as she 
became the mistress of Henry, she devoted her- 
self to be his counsellor, his adviser, giving him 



CHANGES. 169 

wise instruction, and even lending him her 
money. 

Catherine, seventeen years old, plump, merry, 
affectionate, had not known how to win her hus- 
band's love. It was different with Diana. The 
charm of an elder woman, her refined sweetness 
and delicate superiority were perhaps the only 
wiles that could have caught the Dauphin. And 
Diana, with the dignity, had not the disadvan- 
tage of her years. Hers was not the loveliness 
that fades with youth. Her penetrating Armida 
graces were unchanged, her grand style, her 
grave and delicate air, gained rather than lost 
by the sparer outlines and paler tints of waning 
youth. Tall and slender, she was ever soberly 
clad ; she affected no rivalry with the cloth of 
gold and gems of younger beauties; she wore 
black and white in honor of her widowhood. 
When the Dauphin became her lover, she still 
wore her quiet weeds for her dead husband, and 
]^e also took for his badge the mourning colors 
of the man he had supplanted ; all the Dau- 
phin's Court assumed the hues of widowhood. 

No one seems to have found it strange. Di- 
ana was so inaccessible, so remote and distant, 
that rumor itself could find no fault with her. 
She continued the most pious, the most Catho- 
lic, the wisest, the most respectable of ladies. 



I/O MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Many said, and say, that she had conferred on 
Francis the affections that now she bestowed on 
his son. There is no evidence. There was no 
evidence then to what degree the Dauphin was 
her lover, though the Revolution which dese- 
crated the grave of Diana and of two dead 
babies in her chapel at Anet has settled that 
question for a later world. 

'* She has undertaken," says Cavalli, " to in- 
doctrinate the Dauphin, to correct and counsel 
him, and to urge him on towards all actions 
worthy of him." 

The moon was her emblem, — the crescent 
moon, with the equivocal device, '' Donee totum 
impleat orbem." And if the star of Saturn 
shone fitly on the Dauphin's birth, for her 
the natural planet was the pale, the solemn, 
the enchanting moon. Cold, narrow-hearted, 
fanatic rather than religious, curious rather than 
impassioned, Diana was truly a daughter of the 
moon, — a moon that stooped to kiss her 
gloomy young Endymion. The Dauphin fell 
at once under her enchantment. He was then 
eighteen ; but when he died, twenty-three years 
later, King Henry H. was no less devoted. It 
was a possession rather than a passion. The 
amazed courtiers laughed in their sleeves. The 
country people, awe-struck by her name, said 



CHANGES, 171 

that she had enchanted Prince Henry with a 
philtre. They found her, in her lunar beauty, 
the image of that pale Diana of the Forests 
whom witches hymn by night; and they de- 
clared that every morning of her life she drank 
a draught of molten gold. 

This, in a sense, was true. Diana knew how 
to lend and how to give, but she knew still 
better how to grasp. Her delicate, tenacious 
hands filled themselves with the wealth and 
the power of France. She and Montmorency 
stood one on either side the melancholy Dau- 
phin and whispered their counsels in his ears. 
Round them swiftly gathered a strange, sad, 
rigid, fanatic little Court, an assembly of the 
orthodox, the pious, the bien pensants, the 
centre of all that was Romanist and Latinist, 
a society illumined by the dubious crescent 
of Diana, and dressed all in black and white 
in honor of her widowhood. 

Naturally, this new little Court gained im- 
mensely by the death of the Dauphin Francis. 
Now that Henry was the heir, his faction became 
scarce less puissant than his father's. It stood 
in the sharpest contrast to the splendid, free- 
living, tolerant Court of Francis, the Court for 
which Andrea and Lionardo had painted, the 
Court which established the College of France, 



1/2 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

which dreamed of the League with Luther and 
with Soliman. The object of the one party was 
the expansion of France ; they would give one 
hand to the Turk and one to the Huguenot; 
they would draw from Italy, from the East, 
from the Jews, all that could enrich their coun- 
try. But the aim of the younger party was the 
centralization of France ; they wished to develop 
a civilization of their own, owing nothing to for- 
eign influences. The party of Francis gave us 
Rabelais, Marot, the Estiennes, the Castles of 
Blois and Chambord and Fontainebleau, the 
germ of the collections of the Louvre, and the 
College of France. The party of Henry, less 
concerned with ideas, and far more delicate in 
expression, enriched the world with Ronsard and 
the Pleiad, with Anet and Ecouen, with the art 
of Frangois Clouet and his school. A delicate, 
precise, charming, but artificial beauty centres 
in that Court, — a second renaissance, not pas- 
sionate for truth, for knowledge, for freedom, 
for humanity, like the movement that inspired 
the life of Margaret of Angouleme. 

The first consequence of the Dauphin's death 
was immensely to increase the prestige of Mont- 
morency. He was now on the topmost pinnacle 
of success. Both Margaret and the Dauphin 
had used all their influence in his favor. All 



CHANGES. 173 

parties were for him. His skilful generalship had 
made a victorious campaign. Francis, perceiv- 
ing the Grand Master to be a keen and ready 
soldier, and being himself influenced by Mar- 
garet's praises of her friend, determined to 
reward him richly. On the disgrace of Bour- 
bon, the dangerously powerful office of Consta- 
ble of France had fallen into a wise desuetude. 
The King determined to revive it for Montmo- 
rency. Margaret, never shrewd or suspicious, 
rejoiced in this triumph of her friend. The 
news gave general pleasure at Court, for the 
Dauphin was Montmorency's close ally, and 
Queen Leonor and Madeleine de Montmo- 
rency were near and zealous companions. 

These were all for the Grand Master. No 
one else was powerful enough to hazard a 
remonstrance. Yes ; there was one — one 
unlikely and ridiculous Cassandra. Madame 
d'Etampes, hearing of the King's determina- 
tion, prayed, wept, urged, implored Francis 
not to give that post to Montmorency. But 
for that wise once his pretty Anne begged of 
Francis all in vain. 

In the spring of 1538 the ceremony took 
place. Leading the Queen of Navarre by the 
hand, Montmorency advanced to the steps of 
the throne. Francis, taking the sword of state 



174 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

from its scabbard, placed it, bare-bladed, in the 
Grand Master's hand. At that moment the 
heralds waved their flags and cried, " Vive de 
Montmorency, Connetable de France ! " The 
rash deed was done. 

Montmorency was now only second to the 
King. In addition to his immense wealth, his 
office of Constable brought him an income of 
i^24,ooo Tournois. Constable, Grand Master, 
Minister of Finance, Anne de Montmorency 
had virtually the kingdom at his command. 
He could rise no higher, be no greater. 
Neither Francis nor Margaret could aid him 
more. He became henceforward less the ser- 
vant than the rival of the King, chief in the 
Dauphin's rising Court, counsellor of the out- 
raged Queen Leonor. He scarcely concealed 
his contempt for the magnificences and frivoli- 
ties of Francis, nor his aversion for the Lutheran 
views of Margaret. No question now of repay- 
ing old benefits, of requiting a long affection. 
Montmorency — the harsh, frugal, inquisitorial, 
and dogmatic Constable — conscientiously dis- 
approved of Nerac and its refugees. He felt no 
scruple in trying to destroy the influence which 
had helped him to his seat of honor. 

So, when the peace was made, despite his 
promises, despite the benefactions of Margaret, 



CHANGES. 175 

Montmorency raised no plea for the restoration 
of Navarre. The French retained Hesdin and 
Savoy; there was no question of the rights of 
Henry d'Albret; and one day, a httle later, 
when King Francis complained of the singular 
growth of heresy, '' Sire, if you would exter- 
minate it," said the Constable, '' begin with 
your Court, and first of all with your 
sister ! " 

The cruel word missed its mark. *' She loves 
me too much," said Francis. *' She would never 
believe other than I believe, nor anything that 
would prejudice my estate." The shaft glanced 
by King Francis, but it lodged in Margaret's 
heart. In this year, 1538, her frequent letters 
to the Constable come to a sudden end. From 
that day she never liked nor trusted Montmo- 
rency, and for a year and more she sat, in vague 
helplessness, watching all her work unravelled 
by this man, watching Francis drifting towards 
the Emperor in desertion of his natural allies. 



176 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 



CHAPTER XL 

(1539-1540-) 

A FALSE STEP. 

At this time the Emperor's good town of Ghent 
revolted against him, and besought the King of 
France to grant his protection to Flanders. 
Here was a brilliant opportunity for Francis. 
By espousing the cause of Protestant Flanders 
he would virtually conclude a league between 
himself and the great schism of Northern 
Europe, while in defying Charles he would give 
a pledge to Soliman. This was the dread of 
Montmorency, the dear desire of Margaret. All 
through the winter of 1539, the spring of 1540, 
she is busy with the English ambassadors, try- 
ing to win her brother to make a league with 
Henry VUI., trying to estrange him from the 
influence of Montmorency. 

But Montmorency was all in the ascendant 
now, and the Turco-Huguenot alliance had lost 
some of its first attraction to the volatile mind 
of the King. Francis, under Montmorency, 



A FALSE STEP. 177 

began to think again of Milan, to wish again for 
the friendship of Charles. Therefore, to the 
surprise of those who believed themselves his 
real allies, Francis refused the offer of Flanders. 
He even promised Charles a safe passage 
through France if he chose to go that way to 
reconquer his dominions. 

No doubt the Emperor in return promised 
many golden things. We know that he had 
sent a messenger to Francis, earnestly beseech- 
ing the right to pass through France, and hint- 
ing at rewards too great to specify. Francis 
believed him, and he came, — came, to the 
bitter disgust of the Queen of Navarre, the 
evident displeasure of Madame d'Etampes, the 
fiery indignation of Prince Henry, who remem- 
bered those French attendants who, accompany- 
ing him into captivity, had been sent by the 
Emperor to the galleys. But Francis insisted 
on a noble reception for his guest; a certain 
chivalry of instinct forbade him to recall the 
dungeon of Madrid. So the Emperor came, to 
the disgust of France, to the bewilderment of 
the Protestants, and Soliman, and Venice. 

*' These men are not a litil astonied," writes 
Harvel from Venice in November, 1539, "to 
tmdirstonde of the Emperoure's journey to 
Flanders by the wais of France, with few horsis. 

12 



178 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

And certeinly they are matters of grete admira- 
cion and exciding the reasons of men to con- 
sider, so grete and perpetual enemies have so 
grete confidence together." 

Not only Harvel but all Europe believed that 
the Emperor, afraid of the power of Francis 
should he join the League, preferred to grant 
him Milan and keep him as a friend. The 
Venetians, thinking themselves forsaken, were 
in great distress and bewilderment. Soliman 
said, " These Christian princes know not how 
to keep their word." Henry of England sent 
his ambassador to Margaret to learn if Francis 
will in truth incline towards the Emperor. *' I 
fear," says Margaret at Easter-time in 1540, — 
** I fear the Legate Farnese is trying to draw 
him from King Henry to the Emperor." 

Margaret made as brave resistance as she 
could. " Never think," she cries to Wallup, 
" my brother will so lightly lose so faithful and 
assured a friend ! " But in her heart she feels 
herself powerless to turn the current of her 
brother's thoughts from Milan. Li February 
she tells Norfolk, '' If you would have anything 
of importance done, seek to win over Madame 
d'Etampes, who can do more with the King 
than all the rest. Only she," went on Margaret, 
'* can impress a thing in his head against the 



A FALSE STEP. 179 

Constable; and I myself, when Montmorency 
had turned the King against me, — I had to 
seek the help of Madame d'Etampes." 

" This good Ouene is a faythfuU frende to 
your Highness," writes Wallup to Henry VHI. 
But with the cowardice of her tremulous adora- 
tion, Margaret did not dare boldly to oppose 
the folly of the King. She worked on him 
vaguely and indirectly, by chance speeches, by 
the faint contagion of her own convictions, and 
through the influence of Madame d'Etampes. 
Even for that she so firmly thought the right and 
the best, Margaret could not openly remonstrate 
with her brother's weakness. '' These things 
can only be wrought by Madame d'Etampes," 
she declares to Wallup. " I will not speak 
myself. I should be noted partial, and also 
suspected." And, miserable at her own lack of 
influence, she cries, with a pathetic denseness, 
*' My brother is of this sort, that a thing being 
fixed in his head it is half impossible to be 
plucked away." Poor Queen Margaret ! 

She could not believe her brother fickle, much 
less wrong. In the end of spring she declares 
to Wallup, *' The Emperor is a good man." 
But she goes on, seeing the truth in one supreme 
moment of disgust, " The King is too light of 
credence, and trusteth things willingly." Not 



l8o MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

only Margaret now began to see how little worth 
were the golden promises of the Emperor, who, 
having conquered Ghent, sent word to Francis 
that he could not give him Milan without the 
consent of the German Electors. This was a 
quit for Burgundy, which Francis would not 
yield without the consent of the Notables. By 
July there was a coolness between the King and 
the Emperor, and Francis again remembered 
the Protestant- Venetian-Turkish League. He 
sent the Royal Order to the King of Denmark. 
He sent an Embassy to Venice. *' But the 
Venetians now begin to hate the French," says 
Harvel. He sent an envoy to the Turk; and 
for some while offended Soliman would not so 
much as see the envoy. Francis and Margaret 
occupied themselves with the making and sea- 
soning of certain wild-boar pasties which they 
sent to the King of England. But Henry, 
mindful of the fickleness of Francis, would 
promise now no help against the Emperor, 

Francis, nevertheless, was determined to re- 
deem his slip. It seemed natural to redeem 
it at Margaret's expense. In order to reassure 
the German princes, he offered his niece of 
Navarre in marriage to the Duke of Cleves, a 
Protestant at heart, and avowedly an enemy of 
the Emperor. '' Flanders I can get at any 



A FALSE STEP. l8l 

time," said Francis, refusing to accept the Neth- 
erlands in heu of Milan ; and probably he 
thought it well to have a friend so near at hand. 
But the alliance, though good for France, would 
be disastrous to Navarre, It could do nothing 
for the poor confiscated little kingdom. It 
would secure neither France nor Spain. And 
the future Queen would be an absentee living 
on her husband's German territory. Henry 
d'Albret deeply resented the betrothal. But he 
was too feeble to oppose the imperious brother- 
in-law, whose pensioner in some sort he was; 
powerless, although the Estas of his dominions 
more than once appealed against this peremp- 
tory order of the King of France. 

It is only at this moment that we fully appre- 
ciate the intense and all-absorbing devotion of 
Margaret to her brother. This whim of his ran 
counter to every interest of her husband, of her 
subjects, even of her child. They are all noth- 
ing to her. She cannot conceive that they 
should oppose their will to that of Francis. 
Even the passionate anger and grief of the little 
princess did not touch her mother's heart. 
Jeanne, still ailing, frightened, not yet twelve 
years old, wept bitterly at the thought of being 
given to the care of a stranger, different in lan- 
•guage and manners. Her proud and sore httle 



1 82 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

heart rebelled at leaving France to marry a 
simple Duke. Yet she had been very dull and 
lonely at Plessis. *' She filled her chamber 
with complaints ; the air with sighs. One of 
the fairest princesses of Europe is fading away 
in tears ; her locks hanging loose, undressed ; 
her lips without a smile ! And when King 
Francis heard this thing, he named the lady to 
the Duke of Cleves without the consent of her 
father or her mother," declares Olhagaray. 

But it was not because of Jeanne's desolation 
that the King desired to marry her. She was 
only a glove to fling down in the face of the 
Emperor, merely a note of defiance to sound in 
his hearing. She was a pledge to the Nether- 
lands, and to the Lutherans who were favored 
and sheltered by the Duke of Cleves. The little 
princess must not expect the privileges of a 
woman. Jeanne could not resign herself to this 
pohtical necessity. Her father dared not, her 
mother would not help her. So, taking her 
case into her own defence, she appealed herself 
to the uncle whose favorite she was, and whom 
she knew more nearly than either parent. Hav- 
ing seen the Duke of Cleves, she felt she could 
never love him ; she besought her kind uncle 
not to press the marriage. Francis was very 
wroth at this questioning of his decision. He 



A FALSE STEP. 1 83 

imagined, perhaps, that the King of Navarre 
had urged his Httle daughter to revolt. His 
anger came to Margaret's ears. Alarmed and 
horrified at Jeanne's indiscretion, she wrote to 
intercede for her rash little daughter. 

" But," says Margaret, in a later letter to the 
King, *' if the said Duke of Cleves had been to 
you all that he ought and that I desired, I would 
never have spoken against him ; we would 
rather have seen our daughter die, as she told 
us she should do, than we would have stayed 
her from going to the place where I deemed 
she could do you a service." This is no court 
parlance. Margaret considered that the noblest 
lot on earth was to live or to die for her brother, 
the King. Jeanne's revolt, her claims for inde- 
pendence, filled Margaret with something akin 
to disdain and indignation. She had no pity 
for the strange, proud little girl who, forsaken 
by father and mother, beaten and coerced, still 
declared in her weak childish treble that she 
would never love the Duke of Cleves. Her 
brother was Margaret's religion ; and Jeanne's 
determination seemed to her as impious as it 
was disobedient. Saint Felicitas might have 
felt the same had one of her children refused to 
die for the Cross. She was resolved that her 
daughter should not fail the King in his need. 



1 84 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Indignant that her daughter, hers, should shrink 
from so honorable a sacrifice, she was deter- 
mined to subdue that uncompromising and stub- 
born spirit, — indignant, and with the despotic 
anger of the worshipper whose idol is outraged. 

But Jeanne was no silent martyr. She was 
a decided, brusque, and valiant nature, very- 
French in type. Under the exterior of a charm- 
ing and espiegle brunette she concealed an im- 
mense resolution. The day before her betrothal 
to the German Duke she called the three prin- 
cipal officers of her household into her presence 
and bade them witness her protestation. She 
then read aloud : — 

" I, Jeanne of Navarre, continuing the protest I have 
made and in which I persist, say and declare and pro- 
test again before these present, that the marriage to be 
made between me and the Duke of Cleves is against 
my will ; that I never have consented to it and never 
will consent ; and that, whatever I may do or say here- 
after wherefrom one may argue my consent, it will be 
done by force against my will and desire and through 
fear of the King, as of the King my father, and of the 
Queen my mother, who has threatened me, and has 
had me whipped by my governess, the wife of the bai- 
liff of Caen ; and several times my governess has ex- 
horted me, by the command of the Queen my mother, 
threatening me that should I not do, in the matter of 



A FALSE STEP. 1 85 

this marriage, all that the King of France requires, and 
should I not consent, I shall be so flogged and so mal- 
treated that I shall die of it, and that I shall be the cause 
of the ruin and destruction of my father, my mother, and 
all their house ; and all this has put me in such fear — 
especially the destruction of my said father and mother 
— that I know of no one who can succor me but God, 
seeing that my father and my mother have forsaken me ; 
and these know well what I have said to them, and that 
I can never love the Duke of Cleves, and that I will 
none of him. For I protest that should it come to 
pass that I be affianced or married to the Duke of 
Cleves, in any sort or manner that may come about, it 
will be, and will have been, against my heart and will ; 
and he shall never be my husband, and never will I 
hold him for such, and the said marriage shall be null ; 
and I call God and you to witness that you sign with 
me my protestation and recognize the force, the vio- 
lence, and constraint which is used towards me in the 
matter of this marriage. 

Jehanne de Navarre. 

J. d'xA-RRAS. 

Frances Navarro. 

Arnaul Duquesne. 

^ ■ 

There is no cause without its martyrs. Little 
Jeanne, sorely against her will, was now to be tied 
to the rock. The dragon was invited to come 
and take her, — a heavy German dragon, growl- 
ing an uncomprehended and barbaric jargon. 



1 86 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Jeanne regarded him with loathing and aversion. 
But no Perseus appeared. Jeanne was sent to 
her mother at Alengon, and the Duke of Cleves 
followed her there. To Jeanne, young, high- 
spirited, brilliant, made by her confined and 
dreary childhood only the more eager for splen- 
dor and for Paris, it appeared a cruel lot to wed 
this German Duke, twelve years older than 
herself, whose father was a madman, whose 
manners disgusted her, whose tongue she could 
not understand. Her mother had no sympathy 
with this aversion. Remembering her own first 
marriage, she did not think her daughter un- 
fortunate. Margaret appears to have liked the 
Duke of Cleves ; and he was at least an earnest 
against the Emperor. He was gallant in battle, 
wealthy, tolerant, and a protector of the op- 
pressed. Above all, he could serve her brother 
Francis. She had small pity for Jeanne. 

Nevertheless, having gained considerable in- 
fluence over Duke William, she managed to ease 
her little daughter of the most intolerable por- 
tion of her burden. She induced the Duke, out 
of consideration to the childish age and fragile 
health of Jeanne, to submit to a purely formal 
marriage, and then to return to Germany, leav- 
ing his little bride with her parents for at least 
another year. Even this respite did not appease 



A FALSE STEP. 1 8/ 

Jeanne. The day after her betrothal she signed 
another protest. 

At last the King became impatient He sent 
a peremptory message to Margaret, requesting 
her to bring her daughter at once to Chatel- 
lerault, where the Court had removed. The 
meadows of Chatellerault were overbuilt with 
palaces and arches made of greenery; jousts 
and tourneys were held the whole day long. 
At night they were continued by torchlight, — 
a thing which never yet had been seen in France. 
Nymphs, dryads, dwarfs, knights, and ladies ar- 
rayed after the fashion of Amadis and La Belle 
Dam.e sans Merci, hermits in robes of green 
and gray velvet, all manner of gay and strange 
maskers inhabited the palaces of boughs. Little 
Jeanne herself, on her wedding morning, was clad 
so heavily in cloth-of-gold and silver, so studded 
and heavy with gems, that she could not walk 
under the weight of her finery. The King himself 
was to have led her to the altar. Finding her 
so weak, a brilliant thought struck him. Here, 
in the face of France, in the hearing of Europe, 
he would exalt the bride of the Emperor's enemy 
at the expense of the dupe of the Emperor. 

The King called Montmorency to him. He 
told the Constable to pick up the little girl 
and carry her on his shoulders into the church. 



1 88 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Montmorency dared not disobey. The Court 
looked on and marvelled. Indeed, it was a 
strange sight, — that pale, childish figure, stiff 
with gold, and laden with gems like some bar- 
baric idol ; and the Constable of France^ the 
highest dignitary of the realm, turned into a 
porter for a tired child. Montmorency under- 
stood the insult. He was angry and in sore 
despite ; he knew that he served as a spectacle 
to all as he walked in the triumph of his ene- 
mies. "■ My day is done," he began to murmur. 
*' Good-by to it, I say ! " But the Queen of Na- 
varre was glad, and whispered to those near to 
her: ''That man tried to ruin me with the 
King; and now he serves to carry my daugh- 
ter to church." 

Jeanne was married then and there, among all 
those whispers of envy, hatred, and uncharita- 
bleness, — married among the splendor that a 
country groaned to pay for. The Duke of 
Cleves at once retired to Germany, and the 
little bride set out for Pau with her parents. 

The jealousy of Francis had not hitherto 
allowed her to visit her dominions; but now 
the Infant of Spain could not marry her. On 
the last day of the festivities the King sent for 
Montmorency and dismissed him from his favor. 
The Emperor was defied. 



THE LEAGUE WITH SOLIMAN. 189 



CHAPTER XII. 

(1541-1543) 

THE LEAGUE WITH SOLIMAN. 

Francis, as we have said, was now resolved to 
win back his old allies, to disclose his real rela- 
tions with the Emperor. For the Venetian 
embassy the King selected Cesare Fregoso, a 
son of the Doge of Genoa; for Constantinople, 
Antonio Rincon, a man of profound insight, 
one of the few who could answer the question 
of the East As far as Venice they were to 
travel together, then Rincon should proceed 
alone to the Court of Soliman, The two am- 
bassadors journeyed through Piedmont towards 
the Po; for, owing to the heaviness and corpulence 
of Rincon, they had resolved to take boat close 
to Turin and do as much as possible of their 
journey by water. On the ist of July, 1541, 
they reached Rivoli, where they were met by 
messengers who besought them to halt, for 
news had come to the ears of Du Bellay 
which it behooved them to learn before they 



I90 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

left the town. At midnight Du Bellay him- 
self arrived ; he assured the ambassadors that 
he had discovered a plot on the part of Del 
Guasto and the Emperor to waylay their boat, 
murder them, and steal their despatches. But 
Fregoso laughed at this alarm ; he had fought 
against Del Guasto in honorable warfare, and 
did not believe a great captain would stoop to 
such a deed. Rincon did not like to hang 
back alone ; moreover, the corpulent ambas- 
sador dreaded the long journey on horseback 
which Du Bellay advised. He therefore let 
Fregoso laugh his natural fears to scorn, and 
they departed by water, — *' a more easy way," 
says Du Bellay, ^' if less sure." 

The next day a second messenger overtook 
the ambassadors. By him Du Bellay sent them 
accurate details of the ambush laid for them, 
beseeching them to return, or at least to send 
by the courier their despatches back to Rivoli, 
whence he, Du Bellay, would have them safely 
forwarded to Venice. Either through shame or 
false confidence the ambassadors determined to 
proceed ; but recognizing that they had no right 
to imperil the safety of their message, they sent 
the despatches back to Du Bellay. Then, urg- 
ing their oarsmen to make haste, they were rowed 
down the river all the night, passing Casale with- 



THE LEAGUE WITH SOLIMAN. 191 

out any risk. They were now within a few miles 
of Pavia. But a Httle farther down, at a place 
called Cantalupo, a boat full of armed men sud- 
denly boarded them, murdered the wise Rincon 
and the brave Fregoso, took the oarsmen and 
threw them into the dungeons of Pavia Thus 
it was supposed the fate of the ambassadors 
would remain shrouded in mystery. But a 
second boat, conveying the attendants of 
Rincon and Fregoso, escaped from the am- 
bush. Rowing swiftly to the bank, the ser- 
vants escaped ashore and fled into the woods, 
and thence back to Du Bellay at Rivoli. Du 
Bellay hushed the matter up until he discovered 
the prison of the oarsmen who had witnessed the 
actual murder. This at last coming to his ears, 
he had the bars of their windows silently filed at 
night. They escaped ; and having, finally, all 
the witnesses in his hands, Du Bellay turned on 
Del Guasto and accused him and his master of 
the crime. Their guilt was proved, and spread 
horror throughout Europe. '' I cannot mur- 
der ambassadors like your Master ! " cried 
Francis to the Ambassador of Spain. 

And Venice, which could not execute the Em- 
peror or his governor, insisted on the death of 
the assassins in their employ. So Rincon and 
Fregoso were avenged. 



192 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

Charles V. was deeply vexed, not by the dis- 
covery of the murder, but by his failure to 
secure the despatches. He, however, did what 
he could, inventing false papers and spreading 
abroad a rumor that Francis had offered Ger- 
many as a prize to the Turk in reward for Soli- 
man's help against the Empire. '' It is," says 
Margaret, with bitter resignation, *' only another 
of his accustomed lies." But the he did harm 
to France with credulous Germany. 

At this moment Francis might opportunely 
have avenged himself on Charles. The little 
town of Marano on the- Adriatic offered itself 
to the French King. The town was small, but 
the situation was invaluable. Planted between 
Italy and Austria, opposite Venice and neigh- 
boring the East, Marano would have been a 
hand at the throat of the Empire, and a hand 
stretched out to the allies of France. Du Bellay 
strongly urged Francis to take possession at 
once. He did, indeed, put some few soldiers in 
it ; but, ever hesitating, the French King vacil- 
lated, and shrank from offending Charles so 
openly. Before his decision was taken, Venice 
had bought the little place. 

Francis had done much to estrange Soliman ; 
he had as yet given no pledge of his good faith. 
Had he been able to point to Marano, the Turk 



THE LEAGUE WITH SOLIMAN. 193 

might have beheved him. As it was, Soliman 
felt an immense contempt for his credulous and 
vacillating ally. When Captain Paulin brought 
at length the long-delayed despatches, Soliman 
refused to admit him to his presence. 

Paulin, or PoUino, was a man of low origin, 
but shrewd talent and plausible address. He 
succeeded at last in gaining the ear of Soliman. 
The Turk promised at length to renew his alli- 
ance, and to send next year, should the King 
require it, an Ottoman fleet to the aid of 
France ; but his faith in Francis was destroyed. 
Meanwhile, at home, the King, at last awak- 
ened, was doing his best to regain his ground 
with the German Lutherans. But the Emperor's 
lie fought hard against him, and the news of the 
recently concluded alliance with the Porte did 
him harm with the League. " Germany for the 
Turks," the superstitious Germans heard, under 
the promises and advances of the King. All 
that Francis could do was by tolerance at 
home to give, as it were, a new guarantee to 
the Lutherans abroad; and his clemency to the 
rebellious Huguenots of La Rochelle served in 
some sort as a guarantee of his good faith. 

The Court was now all for tolerance and the 
New Ideas ; the Psalms of David, in Marot's ver- 
sion, were set to all the popular vaudevilles, or 

13 



194 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

to airs composed for them at Court. For one 
the Dauphin himself wrote the music. Every 
one had an air, a psalm, and a text of his own. 
Villemadon, Margaret's envoy, marvelled to find 
the gay Court of Fontainebleau thus out-Nerac 
Nerac. The Cardinal de Tournon looked on 
aghast. He might have spared his fears; this 
Lutheranism had no roots. It was but a demon- 
stration against Catholic Spain, against the con- 
victions of the Emperor. Charles appears to 
have understood the matter better. He also de- 
termined to have a device, and sent to Clement 
Marot, begging him to translate for him the 
psalm '' Confitemini Domino." If the duel be- 
tween France and the Empire was to be fought 
with psalms, Charles would not neglect his 
weapons. But Charles took a surer means to 
outwit his adversary. Francis must not be 
permitted to throw his clemency and tolerance 
like dust into German eyes. Convoking a diet 
at Spires, the Emperor bid them look around 
and observe the deeds of this king, so clement 
in words. In the harbor at Marseilles a Turkish 
fleet rode at anchor. Let them ask themselves 
what convictions inspired this psalm-singing 
monarch? He was ready to sacrifice Saint 
Peter and Luther alike to Mahomet. 

Germany listened; the Emperor's speech, 



THE LEAGUE WITH SOLIMAN, 195 

with its caustic sarcasm, could not be refuted; 
it was almost a truth. For the Turk had re- 
venged on Francis his many vacillations and 
infidelities. Soliman had indeed sent the 
promised fleet, for the Turk keeps his word ; 
but the fleet was composed of Algerian pirate- 
ships, and their admiral was the dreaded 
Barbarossa. 

Such aid did Francis more harm than good. 
True, the Algerian pirates were brave and hardy, 
they filled Marseilles with trade and with gold ; 
but they were lawless and insatiable. From 
Provence itself they kidnapped boys and girls 
for the harems of Constantinople. When the 
fleet of Francis and the fleet of Barbarossa 
sailed side by side to the bombardment of 
Nice, the Germans remembered that old lie 
of Charles. *' Germany for the Turks," they 
said to themselves. And forgetting a hundred 
cruelties and persecutions, they rallied round 
the Imperial standard. 

The horror of Germany for France infected 
the German Duke of Cleves, — horror of France, 
and fear of the Emperor. He had fought so 
valiantly for Francis, that Charles in his anger 
had sworn not to leave the Duke an inch of his 
dominions. The Duke fought well ; but at last 
the growing contagion seized upon him. He 



196 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

threw down his arms and sued for forgiveness, 
promising to annul his alHance with the Valois. 
Jeanne, sore at heart, was already travelling to 
the frontier, to be given up to her abhorred 
bridegroom, when this news reached her. It 
appeared impossible. Of his own accord, the 
dragon had renounced Andromeda. " Vilain 
et infame ! " cries Margaret, indignant, think- 
ing of her brother betrayed. But Jeanne is 
happier than ever she had hoped to be again. 
They apply to the Pope to dissolve the 
marriage. 

A worse blow struck Francis on the nth of 
February of this year 1543, when the Emperor 
concluded an aUiance with Henry of England. 
France was now, indeed, alone. The Turkish 
admiral had sailed from the coasts of France, 
where there was no enemy to harass. He had 
promised to return in case of need ; but Francis 
hesitated to call back so redoubtable an ally. 
The Lutherans of Germany and the Protes- 
tants of England were fighting against him 
under his enemy's standard. The Emperor 
was encamped in Champagne. The King of 
England was before Boulogne. 

Francis, at this time, was seriously ill. He 
could not command his army. Tormented by 
internal wounds, oppressed by melancholy, he 



THE LEAGUE WITH SOLIMAN. 197 

could neither act nor advise. The Queen, ago- 
nized by this war between husband and brother, 
was sick unto death. Tiiere was indeed an air 
of joy in the Court of the Dauphin ; but in the 
retinue of the King's favorite son there was a 
sense of failure and disappointment. In Janu- 
ary, Catherine dei Medici had brought into the 
world a sickly and miserable son. The child 
could scarcely breathe, he was so weak. His 
body was covered with livid spots. A serious 
obstruction in his head would always prevent 
him from speaking plainly. Yet, such as he 
was, he, and no longer Charles of Orleans, was 
the heir of France. 



198 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE " HEPTAMERON." — I. 

While wars and rumors of wars invaded this 
distracted land of France, the King had lost his 
genius for battle and adventure. A restless in- 
valid, prematurely old, he was unable to control 
the fortunes of his kingdom. The hero of Ma- 
rignano was no more, nor the chivalric captive 
of Pavia, whose noble and courtly demeanor in 
misfortune had been the ideal of Europe. In 
their stead reigned this sad and superannuated 
man, consumed by his abscess, tormented with 
unrest, his kingdom ravaged by his enemies, his 
Church bewildered by heresy and fanatic suspi- 
cion, his Court split up into cliques and angry 
rivalries, himself the disregarded head of a 
v/aning faction. 

No one at the Louvre could charm away the 
melancholy of the unhappy King. The proud 
and ardent Queen, too long insulted, was only 
nominally a member of her husband's Court. 
Shut in her own apartments, with her Spanish 



THE '' HEP TAME RONr 1 99 

suite, her priests, and her confessor, she made 
of her presence-chamber a Httle Spain, decorous 
and fanatic, in which she strove to forget '* this 
Court of France, where God knows how I am 
treated, and the manner in which the King 
has used me." Worn by disappointment and 
anxiety, she had become a nervous, dehcate, and 
melancholy woman, hopelessly estranged from 
her frivolous husband. 

Madame d'Etampes, who for so many years 
had taken her place and usurped her duties, was 
now too anxious on her own behalf to care to 
soothe the trouble of the King. Should Francis 
die, what would become of her who for so long, 
so wantonly, had provoked the anger and hate 
of the Dauphin and of his stately Diana? What 
lurid clouds would not cover her when that pale 
crescent moon had filled its orb? The pretty 
Huguenot Duchess was in a very fever of anxiety 
and suspicion. What was the melancholy of 
Francis to her own? 

Nor were the children of the King of much 
avail. Henry was of the opposite faction ; he 
looked sternly and coldly on the frivolities of 
his father. The Duke of Orleans, riotous, gal- 
lant, high-spirited, the favorite child of Francis, 
was of little use in so sorrowful a sick-cham- 
ber. Madelaine was dead. Studious Madame 



200 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Marguerite was too young, too inexperienced to 
help. She hved, for the most, in the decorous 
Court of the Queen, apart from the dying, Hcen- 
tious old King, the selfish, imperious mistress, 
the riotous young Duke of Orleans. And Cath- 
erine dei Medici, who had courted Francis in 
order to discover his secrets, had not the art to 
cure a distempered soul. The King was virtu- 
ally alone in his melancholy and his suspicion. 

Then the double war broke out with Charles 
V. and with Henry of England. Queen Leonor, 
never hardened to the constant war between her 
husband and her brother, fell ill of a nervous 
fever from grief and distraction; the two young 
princes went to the war ; the Court was so per- 
vaded by desolating anxiety, that Francis, un- 
able any longer to endure his distress alone, 
summoned his sister from Alengon to Paris. 

Margaret had met her brother in April at her 
Castle of Alengon, and had spent some time in 
his company, while he directed the arrangements 
for the campaign in the North. She was there- 
fore aware of the further change that his sick- 
ness had worked in him. But in April she had 
still been able to interest him in projects of war 
^ and of State ; in April she still had held a brief 
for England, she still had hoped to gain Henry 
and detach him from the Emperor ; in July she 



THE "■ HEPTAMERON:' 201 

found him at war with both ahke, confined to 
his room, without energy or impulse or resource, 
— the miserable debris of a King. 

Her cheerful ardor infused new life into Fran- 
cis. She roused him from his nerveless melan- 
choly, and made him show himself to the anxious 
burghers of Paris. She restored him, as far as 
possible, to his legitimate place as head of the 
State. She prayed with him and for him, ex- 
erting her benign and tolerant spirit to direct 
him into the way of peace ; and amid these more 
serious endeavors she did not forget to amuse. 
She knew that the most grievous enemy of her 
brother was neither the Emperor Charles nor 
Henry of England, but the hypochondriac mel- 
ancholy which hung like a cloud over his senses. 
She sang to him the psalms of her protege, 
Clement Marot ; she read to him the novels of 
Boccaccio, recently translated by another of her 
gentlemen-in-waiting, Antoine Le Magon, under 
her own direction, and these novels became at 
once as great a fashion at Court as the psalms 
of Marot had been a year or two before. For a 
few hours they even chased away the pain and 
depression of the King. In this book, says 
the preface to the " Heptameron," "so great a 
delight was taken by the most Christian King, 
Francis, first of the name, by my Lord Dauphin, 



202 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Madame the Dauphiness, and Madame Mar- 
guerite, that if Boccaccio, from the place where 
he is, could have heard their voices, he would 
have been brought to life again by the praise of 
such as they." 

Soon, however, Margaret was compelled to 
leave her brother. Peace was arranged with 
Charles V. on what appeared to be favorable 
terms. Queen Leonor began to recover from 
her fever, and was able to return to Court. Not- 
withstanding the anger of the Dauphin at the 
sudden termination of a war which he had hoped 
to lead to a more glorious end, Francis I. was 
manifestly content By deserting his ally. Soli- 
man of Turkey, by revoking his protection from 
the Lutherans, by giving his promise to Charles 
V. to crush out heresy and subdue the Turks, 
Francis had secured a splendid inheritance for 
his favorite son. He had sold his soul for an 
abundant mess of pottage. 

Margaret, the champion of the Huguenots, 
should have shrunk from an advantage secured 
by so infamous a desertion. But no ; she was car- 
ried away by that fatal idolatry for her brother 
which deprived her of judgment when he was at 
the bar. Her brother was pleased, was better, 
was almost happy, and Margaret exults over the 
peace between *' le lys et la pomme ronde." 



THE '' heptameron:' 203 

As soon as the peace of Crepy was arranged, 
the King left Paris to hunt in his forests at 
Romorantin, impelled by that nervous restless- 
ness which hurried him continually from place 
to place, and Margaret returned to her Duchy 
of Alengon, to set her affairs in order there. 
She was glad to leave her brother in a less mis- 
erable mind, yet keen enough to see that his 
cure was as yet but half begun. He must still 
be amused, roused, entertained; the on-coming 
of melancholy must incessantly be watched. 
And then it entered into Margaret's eager brain 
to compose another book like those novels of 
Boccaccio which had delighted him so much, — 
to write a " Decameron " herself, in which the 
adventures should belong to people at the Court 
of the King, or, at the least, of his time and 
country. On her frequent journeys from place 
to place she wrote these novels as the horses 
slowly jogged along with her great curtained 
litter, '' my grandmother holding the ink-horn 
for her," says Brantome in his Memoir. And 
as she first began to write these stories in that 
city of Alengon where she had spent unwillingly 
so much of her youth, old memories thronged 
her mind; and many of the adventures of the 
" Heptameron " take place at Alen^on, always 
" in the time of the last Duke Charles." 



204 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

It has been the fashion hitherto to date t ^ 
" Heptameron " too early. Miss Freer, Mai- 
garet's principal biographer in England, misled, 
perhaps, by the constant occurrence of the words 
Alengon and Argentan, and yet more by an 
eager desire to do the best for her favorite, 
has placed the '' Heptameron " in Margaret's 
thoughtless youth. ' But, after all, the *' Hep- 
tameron " does not need our excuses for its 
thoughtlessness. It is gross, but not so gross 
as the time; it is worldly and amorous, but less 
so than the Court. On the whole, the rf mark- 
able thing about it is the ideal of religion and 
virtue which it still lifts, however feebly, in op- 
position to the gay society for which it was 
written. 

We can see that Margaret has no natural dis- 
taste for the freedom of manners which she has 
schooled herself to condemn. It is only immor- 
ality that meets the censure of Oisille, — never 
indecency. Her blame is an affair of the con- 
science, not of the temperament. But even if 
the book did not painfully attain to virtue, did 
not attempt to teach a lesson, were there no 
further intention in it than to amuse with ques- 
tionable stories, none the less is it plain that 
Margaret wrote the book, not in her youth, but 
in her ripe maturity. It is no fault of youthful 



THE ''HEPTAMERON:' 205 

f'^Uy, as I hope to prove. On looking closer, it 
^.^ perhaps, no fault at all. At the best and the 
worst, it remains the pathetic endeavor of a 
devoted sister to beguile the tedium of her dying 
brother by the only sort of stories he will listen 
to; while at the same time she infuses, by a 
strange, incessant twisting of the facts, a lesson 
of trust in God and in virtue; while she attempts 
to advocate tolerance, to condemn a corrupted 
Church. That these morals follow very oddly 
on the gross adventures of the " Heptameron " 
must certainly be conceded, for it is not always 
easy both '^ to point, ^a moral and adorn a tale," 
and with Margaret the two intentions are equally 
strong and equally manifest. Still, though often 
perverse, grotesque, or profane, throughout 
these stories the Moral, the Ideal, is evident. 

It is not difficult to determine the date of the 
" Heptameron." In almost every novel of the 
series we find allusions to events which did not 
take place till Margaret was certainly middle- 
aged. To give a few of these : the Regency 
of Madame (i 524-1 526) is referred to in one 
of the novels ; both Bonnivet and the Duke of 
Alengon are always spoken of as dead (1525) ; 
the League of Cambray (1529) gives rise to 
one adventure, and in the second story we hear 
of the little Prince Jean of Navarre who died in 



206 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

1530; the descent of Charles V. into Provence 
is the occasion of another (1536); the murder 
of Alessandro dei Medici by his cousin Loren- 
zaccio ( 1537) is related in the twelfth novel ; more 
than once a reference is made to the sudden 
death of the Dauphin Francois in 1536; and 
Henry and Catherine are invariably called M. 
le Dauphin and Mme. la Dauphine; the Armis- 
tice of Nice (1538), or more probably that of 
Crespy (1544), is alluded to in the tenth novel; 
in the twenty-fifth we hear the unedifying story 
of the love of Francis for la belle Ferroniere 
(1539)5 the novels towards the end were evi- 
dently written later than the Introduction (which 
must have been composed in 1544), because 
the death of the Duke of Orleans (1545) is 
spoken of in one, and the marriage of the little 
Princess Jeanne to Monsieur de Vendome, which 
occurred in 1548, is the subject of another. 

Margaret died in 1549. The dates given above 
will prove abundantly that these novels cannot 
have been the work of Margaret's girlhood. It 
is clear to me that the *' Heptameron " was com- 
posed from 1544 till the autumn of 1548. It is, 
of course, very likely that Margaret had already 
in her portfolio several isolated stories and ad- 
ventures ; for story-telling was the fashion of the 
time, and she is spoken of as excelling in the 



THE '' heptameron:\ 207 

accomplishment. But as a whole the book be- 
gan most probably in 1544. In the Introduc- 
tion, which presents to us the principal person- 
ages of the work, the following passage occurs : 

" I believe there is no one among you who has 
not read the hundred novels of Jean Boccace, recently 
translated from Italian into French [1543], in which 
the most Christian King Francis, first of the name, 
Monseigneur le Dauphin, Madame la Dauphine, and 
Madame Marguerite have taken such delight . . . 
that the two last-mentioned ladies would fain have 
done as much themselves, and many others of the 
Court deliberated to do as much, — only in one thing 
diiferent from Boccace, that they would write no 
novel that was not veritable history. And with Mon- 
seigneur le Dauphin with them, and as many as would 
make ten persons in all, whom they thought worthy to 
tell such stories, they concluded each to write ten ; but 
they would not admit students and men of letters to 
their number, for Monseigneur le Dauphin did not wish 
that their art should be mingled with this sport ; also 
he feared that the beauties of rhetoric might do wrong 
to some portion of the veritable story. But the great 
affairs that since then have happened to the King 
pthe double invasion, 1 543-1 544], also the peace be- 
tween him and the King of England [this was not 
signed and ratified until 1546, but serious hostilities 
ceased after the peace of Crespy in September, 1544 ; 
this earlier date must be meant, since no allusion is 



208 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

made to the death of the Duke of Orleans in 1545], 
and the confinement of Madame la Dauphine [Jan. 20, 
1544], with many other things sufficiently important to 
engross the Court, have caused this enterprise to fall 
into oblivion." 

I believe that a comparison of the dates 
cited here, and a little consideration of the 
events of the time, will convince my readers that 
in her solitary state at Alengon in 1544, and in 
her frequent journeys about the duchy, Marga- 
ret began the book of which she meant to make 
a modern " Decameron," but which her untimely 
death cut short before the end. 

The mechanism of her stories is clearly bor- 
rowed from Boccaccio and Castiglione. A com- 
pany of ladies and gentlemen of good family 
have been spending the autumn at the Pyre- 
nean baths. Being surprised by grievous floods 
and a heavy deluge of rain, the visitors have left 
the baths and set out for their homes. But the 
dangers of travel from the swollen rivers, from 
wild beasts and yet more savage robbers, have 
overtaken many by the way ; so that of all that 
society only ten find refuge safe and sound in 
the friendly abbey of St. Savin. Here they 
must wait until the floods subside; and, to while 
away the tedium of their imprisonment, they tell 



THE '' heptameron:' 209 

true adventures to each other every afternoon 
from the midday dinner till the hour of vespers. 
The little company is composed of five noble 
gentlemen and five ladies. The first to arrive 
is an elderly and pious widow, Dame Oisille, 
who has lost in the confusion her gentleman-in- 
waiting named Simontault, once the tres affec- 
tueux serviteur of Madame Parlamente, a spir- 
ited but pious woman of the world, ''never lazy 
nor melancholy," who has also taken refuge at 
St. Savin with her churlish husband, Hircan. 
She in her turn is surprised to meet in this place 
of refuge her platonic lover Dagoucin, a most 
devoted admirer, '' who would rather die than do 
aught to hurt the conscience of his lady." Da- 
goucin has escaped from the floods with his 
friend Saffredant, a brilliant young scapegrace, 
wild and reckless, but not unlovable, who is 
under the charm of Longarine, a tender-hearted, 
timid creature, whose husband has been slain 
by robbers in escaping from the flood. The 
shadow of her sudden loss still overhangs her 
delicate nature. These fugitives are joined by 
two young unmarried ladies, Emarsuitte, a quiet, 
somewhat jealous-tempered young woman, with 
a turn for sentiment (''Ah, Sire, you know not 
what a heartbreak comes from unrequited 
Jove! "), and Nomerfide, a scatter-brained high- 

14 



2IO MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

spirited girl, "the youngest and maddest of us 
all." Nor is the number yet complete. Two 
bachelors, Guebron, a worthy, steady gentle- 
man, and the missing Simontault, a proficient 
in badinage (''who is always complaining of the 
ladies, though he looks so merry and in such 
good condition"), have escaped with difficulty 
from the swollen river and reach the abbey at 
last, thus bringing the number of the rescued to 
the necessary ten. 

These fugitives from the floods, being safely 
arrived at St. Savin, consider how they shall 
pass their time. They must wait there about a 
fortnight while the bridges are repaired and the 
waters subside. To live a fortnight without pas- 
time is an insupportable idea. To lament their 
dead friends and perished servants would be a 
waste of time. Ought they not rather, " in joy 
inestimable, to praise the Creator who, content- 
ing Himself with the servitors, has saved the 
masters and the mistresses? " The mere loss of 
servants, — as Emarsuitte remarks, with a lin- 
eerinp" touch of mediaevalism, — the death of 
servants should not throw one into despair, 
they are so easily replaced. Longarine, the 
tender-hearted, is a little shocked at this phi- 
losophy; but she too admits that a pastime is 
necessary, *' else, remembering our losses, we 



THE '' HEP TAME RON.'' 211 

might become wearisome, and that is an incur- 
able malady." As for the madcap Nomerlide, 
she declares that, were she a single day without 
amusement, she would be found dead in the 
morning. To avert so doleful a catastrophe, 
Flircan and all the gentlemen beseech Madame 
Oisille, as the eldest of the party, to discover 
some pastime which, without hurting the soul, 
may be pleasing to the body. 

In this character of Madame Oisille, it is clear 
that the Queen of Navarre has meant to draw 
her own likeness. Margaret, in 1544, was fifty- 
two years of age, and loved to speak of herself 
as older than she was. The reader is already 
acquainted with her leaning towards mystical 
piety, and her strong sense of the necessity 
for reforming the Catholic Church. Widi all 
her piety she is, however, above all things a 
woman of the great world, indulgent to the 
laxities of others, though more severe towards 
herself It is true that Oisille is a widow, Mar- 
garet a wife and a mother. But, alone in her 
Castle of Alengon, with her young husband so 
long away in the South, with her only child so 
seldom seen, bred and reared so far from her 
care, Margaret may well have portrayed herself 
as one who has outlived the dearest interests of 
hfe. Her customary dress of sober black, with 



212 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

the short mantle fastened by pins in front, with 
the white chemisette gathered high at the throat, 
and the low French hood covering the hair, is 
more like mourning garb than royal splendor. 
A widow's dress is her most natural disguise. 

Madame Oisille is a virtuous widow of good 
birth ; she is old and full of experience. Her- 
self all piety and virtue, and even an adherent 
of the severe and scriptural religion of Geneva, 
she is none the less disposed to the conventional 
gallantry of the time. The stories of her com- 
panions sometimes draw from her a mild remon- 
strance, but she never forbids their recital. She 
possesses, indeed, quite a singular talent for 
drawing a pious conclusion from the loosest 
adventure. As all examples of human frailty 
go to prove that virtue and strength should 
be sought in heaven and not on earth, Oisille 
discovers an occasion for piety in Boccaccio ; 
and sometimes the use she makes of her scrip- 
tural knowledge is very strange indeed. A story 
of loveless, faithless marriage suggests the con- 
clusion that " Saint Paul wills not for married peo- 
ple to love each other much ; for if our hearts be 
bound by an earthly affection, we are so much 
the farther from grace." And in another ad- 
venture, where a good wife laughs at her hus- 
band's infidelity, Oisille remarks : '' She was not 



THE '' heptameron:' 213 

one of those against whom our Saviour speaks, 
saying, We have mourned and ye have not 
wept, we have piped and ye did not dance ; for 
when her husband was sick she wept, and when 
he was merry she laughed. So all good women 
should share in their husband's good and evil, 
joy or sorrow, and serve him as the Church 
serves Jesus Christ." This quotation, as a quo- 
tation, might be taken as a caustic piece of sar- 
casm ; but the peculiarity of the " Heptameron " is 
its union of an ideal of chivalry, honor, and re- 
ligion, with an entire absence of the moral sense. 
Piety is an affair of the thoughts, the opinions, 
the ideas, — possibly a matter for one's own per- 
sonal life and soul. That it should attempt to 
regulate the lives of others would be to fall into 
the deadly sin of pride. Mystical as Margaret 
ever is, she is naturally lenient to the grosser 
sins; for all her esoteric dogmas go to prove — 
firstly, that the sins of the body are of small ac- 
count compared with sins of the soul, such as 
pride and deadness of spirit; and secondly, that 
the soul exists only in its relations to the idea of 
God, and that it has no duties and no relations 
to the external world. The militant and respon- 
sible side of virtue is dead in such a soul. 

Of the subjective, idealist, romantic side of 
virtue, the ** Heptameron " affords many an 



2 14 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

example, oddly twisted through a tangle of world- 
liness, gallantry, and gross indecency. Oisille 
always ranges herself on the side of constancy 
and chivalry against Hircan and Saffredant, who 
are supporters of the loose old adage that — 

" Nous sommes faits, beaux fils, sans doute 
Toutes pour tous, et tous pour toutes." 

She will not allow them with impunity to call a 
constant, chaste, unfortunate love, madness and 
folly. "■ Do you call it folly," she cries, '* to love 
honestly in youth and then to turn that affection 
to the love of God?" And she reprimands the 
arrogant licentiousness of these gay youths ; rec- 
ommending to them the older-fashioned ideal of 
reverence and humility on the part of the lover. 

In a fine passage she defends these virtues 
against Hircan, who with a sneer declares that 
chastity is not only praiseworthy, it is even 
miraculous. 

"■ It is no miracle," replies Oisille. 

" Not," says Hircan, '' to those who are already 
angelized." 

"■ Nay," answers Oisille, "■ I do not only speak 
of those who by the grace of God are quite trans- 
formed in Him, but of the coarsest, rudest spirits 
one may see here below in the world of men ; 
and, if you choose, you may discover those who 



THE '' heptameron:' 215 

have so set their heart and affection on finding 
the perfection of science, that they have not 
only forgotten the pleasures of the flesh, but 
even its necessities, even eating and drinking; 
for as much as the soul penetrates within the 
body, by so much the flesh becomes insensible. 
Thus it happens that those who love beautiful, 
honest, and virtuous women have no grosser 
desire than to look on them and to hear them 
speak; and those who have no experience of 
these delights are the carnally minded, who, too 
closely wrapt in their flesh, cannot say whether 
they have souls or no ; but when the body is 
subject to the spirit, it becomes insensible. And 
I have known a gentleman who loved his lady 
so unusually, that among all his companions he 
alone was able to hold a lighted candle in his 
naked fingers, looking at his lady until the flame 
burned him to the bone ; he even said that it did 
not hurt him at all." 

She is the champion, not only of ideal love, 
but of the sentiment of pity, of consideration 
for the poor. More than once her stories turn 
on virtue that shines the brighter in a humble 
setting. For she declares, — 

" The graces of God are not given to men for their 
noble birth, neither for their riches, but as it pleases 
His mercy ; for He is no respecter of persons, He 



2l6 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

elects whom He will ; and His elect honor Him with 
virtue and crown Him with glory. And often He 
elects the lowly of the earth to the confusion of those 
whom the world holds in honor ; for He saith : Let 
us not rejoice in our own righteousness, but rather that 

our names are written in the Book of Life." 

• 

So much for the ideal of the " Heptameron." 
Yet, let us add, there is one hero, one living, 
earthly hero, who embodies all Oisille's con- 
ceptions of chivalry, of courage, justice, and 
mercy. To this Avatar of honor almost every 
page refers. The gayety and brilliance of his 
youth, the splendor of his court, his magnanim- 
ity, his courage, are constantly recorded ; his 
amours and their adventures are lit themes for 
the pious Oisille and the virtuous Parlamente; 
his address and royal qualities are perpetually 
praised. It is King Francis who is not only the 
occasion, but the hero of the *' Heptameron." 

Oisille in particular has so great an admira- 
tion for this prince that she finds noble in him 
the very acts she would have blamed with biting 
wit in Saffredant. With not a word does she 
condemn the wildest of his adventures. That 
he should betray his host, and unwittingly per- 
suade a pious friar to forward an illicit love 
affair, — all this is but a proof of his savoir 



THE '' heptameron:' 217 

faire. She immensely admires the piety that 
prompts him to say his prayers in church, on 
his return from an intrigue with the wife of his 
friend. She, the patroness of ideal goodness, 
cannot find any praise for an honest young girl 
who refuses the illegal love of the King. It is 
the impudence and not the virtue of such a 
refusal that amazes her. In her book, as in her 
life, Margaret's idolatry for her brother paralyzes 
her judgment and her conscience. 

But though she cannot judge him, Margaret 
would fain persuade him. She is too timid, too 
submissive to reproach him for the tremendous 
guilt of the Vaudois massacres. She knows that 
women are smothered, brave men foully mur-- 
dered, for holding opinions no more heretical 
than her own. And though here and there she 
intercedes for some special victim, she dares not 
judge, she dares not condemn, she dares not 
rush in and stay the ruining arm of the King. 
But with the timid fawning of a hound upon 
its angry master she tries to reconcile him to 
her belief again. Timorously she plucks at his 
sleeve, she reminds him that this faith he pun- 
ishes is her own. Even as he strikes and slays 
she tells him her simple tale, and trusts that he 
will catch the moral. It is all the interference 
that she dares. 



21 8 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

So throughout this " Heptameron " of hers, 
which aims above all things at beguiling the mel- 
ancholy of Francis, we take note of a secondary 
aim, a purpose little less urgent. It is to point 
out the corruption of the Church, the immo- 
rality of the convents and monasteries, the im- 
pudent debauchery of the secular confessors, 
the low ignorant baseness of the wandering 
Franciscan friars. She tries to show how from 
the Scriptures alone, and not from the dogmas 
of a Church intent on temporal power, should 
the spiritual rules of the Christian life be framed. 
She shows the inadequate repentance of those 
who buy a mass to condone a crime. Thoughts 
before deeds, souls before bodies, faith before 
works, — this is her constant lesson, coming 
strangely enough from her frank and Gallic 
mouth. And again and again, explicitly and by 
implication, she distinguishes the purer thoughts, 
the cleaner lives of those who have left all to 
follow these doctrines. And who are they? 
She will not answer that. Let the King think 
a moment. They are Lefebvre the dispossessed ; 
Roussel, Farel, Calvin the exiled ; Berquin, Le 
Court, and all the host of those who have gone 
up to heaven in a chariot of fire. They are 
the poor Vaudois, who are dying by scores and 
by hundreds at the King's command ! 



THE ''HEPTAMERONr 219 

This is her second aim, — to scathe and expose, 
to soften and persuade. And after every bitter 
phrase, every flash of irony, we can imagine 
the pause, the anxious thought, — will the King 
be the headsman of such bidders as these? 
But alas ! as is naturally the fate of a lesson so 
subtly', so indirectly conveyed, Francis laughed 
at the fable, and did not heed the moral. Oi- 
sille is an excellent mistress of the ceremonies ; 
it is a pity, adds the Court, that she is taken 
with these new ideas. And Francis laughs, and 
says, '' She loves me too well to adopt a religion 
that would prejudice my estate ! " 

With no better success than this, Madame Oi- 
sille also preaches to her companions. She in- 
duces them to read the Bible ; they will do any- 
thing to gratify so charming a lady. So before 
dinner they study the Scriptures at her side. 
After dinner, not to be outdone in complaisance, 
Oisille listens to their Boccaccian stories ; and 
she listens without shame and without regret. 
She and her listeners are equally ignorant 
that their novels leave anything to be desired. 
For Madame Oisille, with her chivalric ideal, is 
no more fastidious than they. 

But we have made too long a digression from 
the " Heptameron " itself. Hircan and his friends 
desiring, as I have told, that Madame Oisille 



220 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

should find them a suitable pastime, Oisille re- 
plies in a speech of real beauty : — 

" My children, this is a difficult thing that you ask 
of me, — to teach you a pastime that can deliver you 
from your troubles ; for, having sought such a remedy 
all my life, I have never found but one. And this 
is the reading of the Holy Scriptures, in which is 
found the true and perfect joy of the spirit, and from 
which proceed health and rest for the flesh. And if 
you ask me to tell you the receipt which keeps me so 
joyous and so healthy in my age, it is that as soon as 
I arise in the morning I take the Holy Scriptures and 
read therein, seeing and contemplating the Will of 
God, who sent His Son for our sake into the world to 
announce His Holy Word and glad tidings, whereby 
He promises remission from our sins and the full dis- 
charge of all our debts, by the gift of His love, His 
passion, and His martyrdom. The thought of this so 
fills me with delight, that I take up my Psalter, and, 
as humbly as I can, I sing in my heart and say with 
my mouth the beautiful canticles and psalms which 
the Spirit of God composed in the heart of David, 
and of other writers. And the contentment that I find 
therein so eases me, that all the evils which my days 
may bring appear to me as benedictions, seeing that 
in faith I keep in my heart even Him who hath borne 
them all for me. Likewise before supper-time I retire 
and pasture my soul in some holy lesson ; and then 
at night I recollect my doings of the day, and ask 



THE '' HEPTAMERON:' 221 

forgiveness for my faults, and praise God for His 
mercies ; and in His love and fear and peace I take 
my rest, .assured against all evils. There, my children, 
you behold the pastime which, for long enough, has 
sufficed me, who, having questioned all things, have 
found in none of them contentment for the spirit. 
Haply, if every morning you would read the Scriptures 
for an hour, and afterwards say your prayers devoutly 
during Mass, you would find in this desert the beauty 
which is in every place ; for he who knows God sees 
all things fair in Him, and afar from Him there is but 
ugliness." 

But this proposal fills Hircan and the others 
with dismay. Imagine Nomerfide, who would 
die without a pastime, and Longarine, who is 
afraid to sorrow for her husband lest she 
should ruin her manners ; imagine the dashing 
Saffredant, the cynical Hircan, the sentimental 
Simontault, giving a fortnight to devout medi- 
tation ! Hircan ventures to remonstrate. He 
bids us remember that they are not yet so mor- 
tified but that they need some amusement and 
corporal exercise. They are willing to study the 
Scriptures ; but at home the men have hunting 
and hawking, the ladies their household, their 
embroidery and music ; both have dances and 
honest amusements, *' which make us forget 
a thousand foolish thoughts." In addition to 



222 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

devotion, they must have something which shall 
take the place of all this. It is then that Parla- 
mente, who takes a sort of second lead in ruling 
the little society, suggests that they shall imi- 
tate the novels of Boccaccio ; and a sort of com- 
promise is finally adopted, by which the ladies 
and gentlemen agree to spend their forenoons 
in prayer and their afternoons in pastime. 

We can easily imagine that fair and gallant 
company, mustering in the pleasant warmth of 
the autumn noonday along the road that leads 
from the convent to the pleasant meadow where 
they hold their sessions. Madame Oisille, all 
in white and sober black, stands out conspicu- 
ously from the knot of gayly blended colors. 
Her dress we may fancy to be the same that 
the Queen of Navarre wears in the illustrations 
to La Coche. The others are clad after the pat- 
tern of the sisters and brothers of the Abbey of 
Thelema. The men wear close beards and mous- 
taches, their hair clipped very short, and cov- 
ered with a small low cap of black velvet, from 
which, towards the front, a white plume of Mara- 
bout feathers starts. Their long stockings are 
white or black, crimson or scarlet ; their slashed 
trunk-hose are of the same colors or of a vary- 
ing and harmonious shade. They wear slashed 
and embroidered pourpoints, in cloth of gold or 



THE '' heptameron:' 223 

silver, damask, satin, or velvet; their short 
cloaks are richly furred and guarded ; at his 
side each man carries a handsome sword, with 
a gilded hilt and a sheath the same color as his 
hose. 

The ladies are yet more magnificent. Orange, 
tawny, blue, ash-gray, yellow, white, or crimson, 
are their colors ; velvet or silver taffeta embroi- 
dered is their favorite wear. Their skirts are dis- 
tended to the shape of an inverted funnel. Their 
stockings are scarlet or flame-color, their slashed 
shoes of crimson and violet velvet. They have 
mantles of taffeta furred with marten, lynx, or 
genet. On their heads they wear low French 
hoods, small caps edged with goldsmith's work, 
or gold nets with pearls at the angles. A gold 
chain hangs from the girdle ; pomanders and 
scent-bottles, seals and keys dangle from it; and 
every lady has a feather fan, after the pattern of 
Queen Leonor's, with a little mirror at the back. 
They walk slowly, for the ladies have high pat- 
tens or choppines to keep their velvet shoes from 
the dust ; you cannot see their faces, for they all 
wear little silken masks to shield their complex- 
ions from the noon ; their hands are hidden in 
rich embroidered gloves. Thus, secured from 
cold of the wind or scorch of the sun, they walk 
along towards the fair green meadow. 



224 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

If one should peer too close, perhaps those 
splendid, colored garments would be seen to be 
stained with dust or rain, to be frayed with travel. 
If one should look too curiously, one might see 
many a speck in the courtesy and honor of the 
men, in the lovableness and spirit of the women. 
Yet from afar they look a happy and a pleasant 
company. We would fain know more of them. 
Oisille we know; we knew her when she was 
young ; we have sympathized with her in good 
and evil fortune. But v/ho are these, her fair 
and briUiant companions? M. Genin would be- 
lieve them the ladies and gentlemen in waiting 
at the magnanimous and cultured little Court of 
Nerac. But if so, we only know the portraits ; 
the originals are dead and forgotten ; the dust 
of oblivion is piled thick upon them. I had 
hoped to discover here that courtly society 
whom Margaret mentions in her preface, those 
first would-be writers of the French '' Decam- 
eron." But, even to suit so delightful a theory, 
I could not identify the rude, harsh, savage, yet 
half-servile Hircan with the musical, cultured, 
romantic Dauphin Henry, clad always in the 
colors of his fair incarnate moon, and passing 
his leisure in reading " Amadis." How is it 
possible that in the brilliant, quick, active Par- 
lamente one should recognize Catherine dei 



THE '' HEPTAMERONr 225 

Medici, plump, thick-set, bourgeoise, with her 
conciliatory manners and servile grace? No; 
such a theory would cost too dear. To main- 
tain it one must rival that restorer of the Apollo 
Belvedere, who, having made his pair of feet too 
small, scraped the ankles of the statue until they 
were slender enough to fit. It is best to throw 
aside such ready-made restorations. And then 
a sudden fancy shot across my mind. True, 
Madame Oisille is Margaret of Navarre. But 
yet, — is it not possible? — as she sits in her 
gloomy room at Argentan, the room where she 
had often been unhappy in the good old days 
when she was so young, as she sways in her litter 
along the straight, dusty, poplar-bordered and 
familiar roads of Alengon, thinking how she 
shall make this book that is to charm her 
brother, may not a sudden vision of the old 
past years rise up before her eyes; may not 
the contrast strike sharply on her? Then, half 
in regret and half in pitiful memory, may she 
not place beside this stately figure of herself 
grown old, the slimmer, swifter, brighter figure 
of Margaret d'Alengon, and marry this pious, 
worldly, brilliant Parlamente to Hircan, the 
moody and churlish Duke Charles? Then by 
their side we can imagine to arise the tender, 
loving, gentle vision of Philiberta of Savoy, and 

15 



226 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

we behold the sweet and timid Longarine. With 
M. Franck, I should give Saffredant to Bonnivet. 
Many another, whom we knew not, comes back 
to mind again, and takes a place in her story. 
Lastly she creates '' le gentilhomme Simontault," 
obviously not quite the equal in rank of his asso- 
ciates, who once, long ago, was Parlamente's trh 
affectiLeiLX serviteur. And in this neat, merry, half- 
sentimental fellow, ** a little sore at his jester's 
reputation," we fancy that we see again the well- 
remembered form of Clement Marot, of whose 
early death Queen Margaret must have heard in 
that very autumn of 1544. 



THE ''heptameron:' 227 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE '' HEPTAMERON." — II. 

I HAVE not yet noticed the claim of Charles 
Nodier to give the " Heptameron " to Bona- 
venture Desperriers ; for indeed I believe this 
claim has very few supporters, and that it 
would be impossible to prove its justice. On 
the other side, on the side of Margaret, is 
ranked all past tradition, all modern author- 
ity, — Brantome, whose grandmother held the 
ink-horn for the Queen; Claude Gruget, who 
copied the unfinished text and gave the ^* Hep- 
tameron," written for the Court to the world at 
large. And in modern days Michelet Genin, 
the bibliophile Jacob, Monsieur Roux de 
Lincy, with all Margaret's historians and edi- 
tors, affirm the book to be written by her hand. 
Miss Freer, to whom Margaret's ** Heptameron " 
appears — 

"The first.fleck's fall on her wonder of white," 

would gladly accept the theory of Nodier; but, 
with the best will in the world, she cannot be 



228 MARGARET OF ANGOL/LJ^ME. 

convinced. Indeed, he has a hard case to prove. 
Desperriers left so very little authentic work be- 
hind him that the argument of similarity of style 
goes for almost nothing. We know less of Des- 
perriers's style than of Margaret's, and the style 
of the " Heptameron " is a woman's style. We 
have absolutely no direct evidence that Desper- 
riers had any share in the book. He was a valet- 
de-chainbreX.0 the Queen of Navarre, but so were 
most of the men of letters of his age. The un- 
trustworthy testimony of the Abbe Goujet, who 
relates that Bonaventure Desperriers helped the 
Qu«een in her novels and her poems, is all that 
Nodier can find to support him. He is too 
shrewd to believe that Desperriers, an avowed 
atheist, and of a fanatic scepticism, had a hand 
in the mystical rhodomontade of '' Les Margue- 
rites de la Marguerite." But he is, in truth, 
scarcely better justified in attributing the '* Hep- 
tameron " to an unbeliever. The bursts of Lu- 
theran eloquence, the tendency to round off 
all discussion with a text, the tone of somewhat 
unctuous, mystical piety, — all these are emi- 
nently characteristic of Margaret. They could 
scarcely be considered likely attributes of '' le 
joyeux Bonaventure." 

Dismissing, then, this theory of Nodier's, let us 
consider the merits of the '* Heptameron " itself. 



THE '' HEPTAMERONP 229 

To-day it is scarcely a work that one would 
choose to read from end to end for pleasure. 
This is not only on account of its grossness, 
for it is infinitely less indecent 'than many works 
of the Sixteenth Century which are certainly 
well read at present. Putting aside such writers 
as Brantome, Rabelais, or Bandello, it is less 
coarse than much of Shakspeare. But on read- 
ing this book one becomes poignantly aware 
that it falls short, not only of our standard of 
decency, but of our idea of pathos, of humor, 
of interest. There is none of the genius which 
sees the human being and not the apparel; 
none of the passion, the poetry, the wide and 
human wisdom, which have saved greater writ- 
ers for the pleasures of an altered age. Its 
virtues, as well as its faults, are merely of the 
time, and not particular ; and it is well that the 
'' Heptameron " should be merely the delight of 
students and the treasure of antiquarians. 

There is, to begin with, but one truly pathetic 
situation in the book. It is in the second novel, 
where the Queen's muleteer, returning from 
Amboise, sees, stretched across the doorway of 
his house, a bier, with the white-covered corpse 
of the wife whom he left well and safe two days 
ago, and who has been foully outraged since 
then, and murdered. Singularly little is made 



230 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

of this poignant moment. What interested 
Margaret and her courtly readers is no longer 
interesting to the taste of to-day, at once much 
simpler and far more subtle. Yet, not to be 
unfair to a very famous book, I have translated 
two extremely characteristic stories ; and as the 
conversations in between the novels are by far 
the liveliest and most vigorous part of the 
*' Heptameron," I have chosen two that follow 
each other. 

NOVEL LXIV-. 

A gentlemaJi disdained in marriage enters a monastery, 
wherefore his lady does as much for him. 

In the town of Valencia there lived a gentleman who 
during five or six years had loved a lady so perfectly 
that neither of them was hurt in honor nor in con- 
science thereby ; for his intention was to make her his 
wife, — and reasonably enough, as he was handsome, 
rich, and of a noble house, and he had not placed 
himself at her service without first making known 
his desire to arrange a marriage with the good-will 
of her friends ; and these, being assembled for that 
purpose, found the match in every way fitting, if the 
girl herself should be of their mind. But she, either 
hoping to find a better, or wishing to hide the love 
she had for the youth, discovered an obstacle ; so the 
company was broken up, not without regretting that 



THE '' heptameron:' 231 

she could not give the affair a better ending, seeing 
that on both sides the match was good. But, above 
all assembled, the poor gentleman was. wroth, who 
could have borne his misfortune patiently had he be- 
lieved the fault to lie with her friends and not with 
her; but, knowing the truth (to beheve which was 
more bitter than death), he returned home without a 
word to his lady-love or to any other there ; and hav- 
ing put some order in his affairs, he went away into a 
desolate place, where he sought with pains and trouble 
to forget this affection, and to turn it wholly to the love 
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to which affection he was, 
without comparison, the more obliged. And during 
this time he never heard either from his lady or from 
her friends ; therefore he resolved, having failed in the 
happiest life he could have hoped, to take and choose 
the most austere and disagreeable j and full of this sad 
thought, which one might call despair, he went to be- 
come a monk at a Franciscan monastery, close to 
which lived several of his friends. These, having heard 
of his despair, made every effort to hinder his resolve ; 
but so firmly was it rooted in his heart, they could not 
turn him from it. Nevertheless, knowing his ailment, 
they thought to find the medicine, and went to her 
who was the cause of his sudden devotion, finding her 
much bewildered and astonished at their news, for she 
had meant her refusal, which was but for a time, to test 
the true love of her lover, and not to lose it forever ; 
and seeing the evident danger of this, she sent him an 
epistle, which, rudely rendered, runs as follows : — 



232 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

" Because, unless it well be proven, Love 
For strong and loyal no one can approve, 
I wished to wait till proven to my mind 
Was that I longed so ardently to find. 
A husband full of perfect love it was 
That I desired, a love that would not pass ; 
And so I begged my parents not to haste, 
Still to delay, let one year, two years, waste 
Before I played the game that must endure 
Till death, which many a one repents, for sure. 
I never said I would not have your love ; 
So great a loss I was not dreaming of. 
For, certes, none but you I loved at all — 
None other would I lord and husband call. 
Ah me ! my love, what bitterness to say 
That thou without a word art gone away ! 
A narrow cell, a convent life austere, — 
These are your choice ; oh, misery to hear ! 
Now must I change my office, pleading so. 
As once in guileless words you used to do — 
Requiring that which was of me required, 
Acquiring him by whom I was acquired. 
Nay, now, my love, life of the life of me, 
I do not care to live bereft of thee. 
Ah ! turn again thy distant eyes to mine ; 
Turn on thy steps, if so thy will incline. 
Leave thou the cowl of gray, the life austere ; 
All of my love and all my heart are here, 
By thee so many times, so much desired. 
Time hath not changed my heart, it hath not tired. 
For thee, for thee alone, I keep my heart, 
And that must break if thou must keep apart. 
Come, then, again return; believe thy dear ; 



THE ''heptameron:' 233 

Consider in thy mind how many a year 

We might be happy, joined in holy marriage ; 

And me beheve, and not thy cruel courage. 

Be sure I never meant to say or do 

A word to wound, a deed to make thee rue. 

I meant to make you happy, dear, enough, 

When I had full assurance of your love. 

And now, indeed, my heart is fixed and sure ; 

Thy firmness, faith, and patience to endure, 

And, over all, thy love, I know and see. 

And they have gained me wholly, dear, to thee. 

Come, now, and take the thing that is thine own ; 

For thine am I, and thou be mine alone." 

This letter, carried by one of his friends, along with 
all possible remonstrances, was received by the gentle- 
man Franciscan with a very mournful countenance, 
and with so many sighs and tears it seemed as though 
he meant to burn or drown the poor little letter ; but 
he made no answer to it, telling the messenger that 
the mortification of his extreme passion had cost him 
so dear that now he neither cared to live nor feared to 
die ; wherefore he begged her who had been the occa- 
sion of his grief, since she had not chosen to content 
the passion of his great desires, not to torment him 
now that he was quit of them, but to content herself 
with the evil done, for which he could find no other 
remedy than the choice of this rude life, whose con- 
tinual penance put his sorrow out of mind, and by fasts 
and discipline enfeebled his body so that the remem- 
brance of death had become his sovereign consolation ; 



234 MARGARET OF ANGOULJ^ME. 

and, above all, he prayed her never to let him hear 
any news of her, for even the memory of her name 
had become an insupportable purgatory to him. The 
gentleman returned with this mournful answer, deliver- 
ing it to her, who could not hear it without incredible 
regret. But I.ove, which lets not the spirit fail until 
it is in extremity, put it into her fancy that if she could 
only see him, the sight of her and the voice of her 
would have more force than writing. Wherefore, 
accompanied by her father and the nearest of her kin, 
she set out for the monastery where he dwelt, having 
left nothing in her tire-closet that could heighten the 
aspect of her beauty ; and sure she felt that if he 
could but see her once and hear her speak, it would be 
impossible that the flame, so long continued in their 
hearts, should not light up again, and stronger than 
before. Therefore, entering the monastery about the 
end of Vespers, she had him called to a chapel in the 
cloisters. He, who knew not who was asking for him, 
went to fight the hardest battle he had ever fought. 
And when she saw him, all pale and undone, so that 
she scarcely knew him again, yet filled none the less 
with a grace no less amiable than before, then love 
constrained her to stretch out her arms, thinking to 
embrace him; but the pity of seeing him in such a 
state sent such a sudden weakness to her heart that 
she fell down fainting. Then the poor monk, who was 
not destitute of brotherly charity, hfted her up and sate 
her on a seat there was in the chapel. And he him- 
self, who no less needed succor, made as if he felt no 



THE '' HEPTAMERONy 235 

passion, strengthening his heart in the love of his God 
against the opportunity that tempted him, so that he 
seemed, from his countenance, to ignore that which he 
saw. She, coming to Hfe again, turned on him her 
eyes, that were so beautiful and piteous they would 
have softened stone, and began to tell him all the 
thoughts she had to draw him from that place ; to 
which he answered in the most virtuous manner that 
he could. But in the end the poor monk, feeUng his 
heart melt before the abundant tears of his darling (as 
one who sees Love, the cruel archer, whose wound he 
has long suffered from, make ready his golden arrow to 
strike him in a fresh and mortal part), even so he fled 
away from Love and his Beloved, as though the only 
force left to him lay in flight. And being shut in his 
chamber, not wishing to let her go without some reso- 
lution taken, he wrote to her a few words in Spanish, 
which I have found so excellent in substance that I 
have not chosen to diminish their grace by any render- 
ing of mine ; and these words he sent to her by a little 
novice, who found her still in the chapel, in such 
despair that, had it been lawful for her to take the 
veil in that monastery, she would have stayed. But on 
seeing the writing, which said, " Volvete don venisti, 
anima mi, que en las tristas vidas es la mia," she, 
knowing by these words that all her hopes had failed, 
determined to believe the counsel of him and of her 
friends, and returned to her own home, to' lead there 
as melancholy a life as her lover spent austerely in his 
monastery. 



236 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

**Thus you see, ladies, the vengeance this gentle- 
man took on his hard-hearted love, who, thinking to 
make an experiment of his truth, drove him to despair 
in such a manner that when she would she could not 
have him again." 

" I am sorry," said Nomerfide, " that he did not 
doff his cowl to go and marry her ; for then, methinks, 
there would have been a perfect marriage." 

" Of a truth," said Simontault, " I think he was very 
wise ; for who has well considered the marriage state 
will not esteem it less vexatious than an austere 
devotion, and he, so greatly weakened by fasts and 
abstinences, feared to take upon him such a life-long 
burden." 

" It seems to me," said Hircan, *' she did very 
wrong to so weak a man in trying to tempt him with 
marriage ; that is too much for the strongest man in 
the world. But had she only spoken of love and 
friendship, with no other bondage than that of will, 
there is no cord would not have been broken nor 
knot untied ; yet, seeing that for escape from purga- 
tory she offered him hell, I think he had good reason 
to refuse." 

" I' faith," said Emarsuitte, " there are many who, 
intending to do better than others, do worse, or at 
least, the very reverse of what they would." 

"Truly," said Guebron, "you put me in mind, a 
propos of nothing, of one who did the opposite of her 
intention, and therefrom came a great tumult in the 
Church of St. John of Lyons." 



THE '' heptameron:' 237 

"Prithee, then," said Parlamente, "take my place 
and tell us the tale." 

" My tale," said Guebron, " will neither be so long 
nor so piteous as that of Parlamente." 



NOVEL LXV. 

The simplicity of an old woman ^ who, offering a lighted 
taper to St. jfohn of Lyons, stuck it to the forehead 
of a soldier who lay asleep there on a sepulchre. 

In the Church of St. John of Lyons there was a very 
dark chapel, and within it a stone sepulchre carved 
in high relief with images as large as life, and all 
round the sepulchre the likeness of many men-at-arms 
lay as if asleep. A soldier, strolling one day about 
the church during the great heat of summer, felt 
drowsy with the warmth, and looking at the dark, 
cool chapel, he thought he would go to the sepulchre 
and sleep there among the other men-at-arms ; and 
so he lay down beside the images. Now it happened 
that a good old woman, very pious, came to the 
chapel as he lay fast asleep ; and after she had said 
her prayers, holding a candle in her hand, she meant 
to fix it against the sepulchre ; and finding nearest 
her the sleeping man, she would have stuck it to his 
forehead, believing him a stone image ; but against 
this stone the wax would not hold. The good woman, 
thinking it was because the image was so chill, held the 
flame against his brow to make it warm enough for her 



238 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

candle to stick there ; but the image, which was not 
insensible, began to call out; at which the woman, 
nearly out of her mind with fear, took to crying, " A 
miracle ! a miracle ! " and so loud that all who were in 
the church began to run, some to ring the bells and 
some to see the miracle. And the good woman led 
them to see the image which had moved, which gave 
occasion for laughter to many present ; but several 
priests could not content themselves so easily, for they 
had hoped in their hearts to turn this sepulchre to 
good account and make money out of it. 

" Look you, therefore, ladies, to what saints you 
give your candles." 

■ " 'T is a great thing to know," said Hircan, "that, 
whatever they set about, women always must do 
wrong." 

" Is it doing wrong," said Nomerfide, " to carry 
candles to a sepulchre ? " 

"Yes," said Hircan, "when they set fire to men's 
foreheads ; for no good thing can call itself good when 
it is done badly. Fancy ! the poor woman thought 
she was making God a fine present of her little 
candle ! " 

" God does not regard," said Oisille, " the value of 
a gift, but the heart that gives it. It may be this good 
woman had more love for God than those who give 
him their great torches ; for, as the Scripture says, 
she hath cast in of her need, even all her substance." 

"'Yet I will not beheve," said Saffredant, "that 



THE '' heptameron:' 239 

God, who is sovereign wisdom, can take pleasure in 
the foolishness of women ; for let simplicity please Him 
as it will, I see in the Scripture He makes no account 
of the ignorant ; and if He commands us to be simple 
as the dove. He commands no less the wisdom of the 
serpent." 

" x^s for me," said Oisille, " I esteem her not igno- 
rant who carries to God her candle or lighted taper, 
carrying it as one who recants her sin, kneeling on the 
ground, torch in hand, before her sovereign Saviour, to 
whom, confessing her damnation, she appeals in a sure 
hope for mercy and salvation." 

'* Would to God," said Dagoucin, " that every one 
understood the matter as well as you ! But I beheve 
these poor simpletons have no such meaning in their 
deeds." 

Oisille answered him, " Those who least know how 
to tell it are often those who feel the most the love of 
God and of His will ; wherefore we should judge no 
one but ourself." 

Emarsuitte, in laughing, added, " It is not so strange 
a thing to have frighted a sleeping clown ; for women 
as low-born as she have made great princes afraid, 
and without setting fire to their foreheads." 

" I am sure," said Dagoucin, " that you know some 
story you will tell us ; wherefore you will take my place, 
if you please." 

" The story will not be long," said Emarsuitte ; '' but 
if I can tell it as it happened, you will have no need to 
weep about it." 



240 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

The first of these stories gives a good idea of 
the romantic side of the " Heptameron ; " all the 
pathetic tales are much the same. It is impos- 
sible to-day to care for Florinde and Amadour: 
for all the various true lovers, who see each other, 
fall in raptures, are parted, and retire each to a 
separate monastery. This is Margaret's stock 
idea of the heart-rending ; and the people of the 
*' Heptameron " cherish this ideal of pathos (as 
perhaps the ideal is always cherished) in defi- 
ance of the conduct of actual life. Not one of 
them would allow a daughter to marry for love. 
*' You may say what you will," says Oisille, 
" none the less we must recognize paternal au- 
thority; for if people married at pleasure, what 
unhappy marriages would there not be ! Is it 
to be expected that a young man and a girl from 
twelve to fifteen years of age can understand what 
is really their good? And if you consider, those 
who have married for love come off far worse, as 
a rule, than those who are married by force ; for 
young men, not knowing what is fit for them, 
take the first they find, without consideration ; 
then they discover their error, and go from bad 
to worse ; whereas a forced marriage is gener- 
ally made by those who have more judgment 
and experience than those whom it chiefly 
concerns; so that when these discover all the 



THE '' HEPTAMERONP 24 1 

benefits they did not understand, they savor 
and embrace these with the greater affection." 
Thus discourses Oisille, in dialogue with her 
companions, thinking, no doubt, a httle bit- 
terly of the rebellious conduct of Mademoiselle 
d'Albret. And this is the real opinion of the 
whole society. But let any one of them begin 
on a pathetic tale, and we shall have the old 
puppets, the sentimental youth, the heartbroken 
young lady; and the whole company will melt 
into tears for a suffering which, safely off the 
stage of the ideal, would elicit only their anger 
or their contempt. But we of a later generation 
listen with cheeks unwet. This artificiality grates 
upon us. These broken hearts are all too much 
alike. 

When the story takes a humorous turn, new 
difficulties arise. Queen Margaret certainly 
shows more spirit and vigor in this direction ; 
her satire is often shrewd ; she has a certain 
enjoyment of life, of pleasure, of adventure, and 
even of grossness, which is at all events better 
than the pointless pretence of her pathos. It at 
least is real, and it is very characteristic of her, 
of her nation, and of her time. It has a certain 
historical value, this free, loose, reckless gayety 
of hers. And though there is, intrinsically, little 

humor in it, there is much humor in the reader's 

16 



242 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

mind who notes the odd conjunction of this Rabe- 
laisian fancy with the mystical piety of Oisille. 
It gives his imagination a certain humorous 
shock to realize that these moods are perfectly 
compatible with each other. 

But the real value of the " Heptameron " lies 
in a certain direct actuality in the description of 
life and of manners in such a town as Alengon 
or Amboise at ^ that period. We can frame a 
fair idea of the relative position of classes, of 
the all-pervading wealth and comfort, the great 
amount of time given to idleness and pleasure, 
and also of the thousand sad incongruities which 
France presented then. In this sense the " Hep- 
tameron " is really interesting. We rummage 
among its out-dated gallantry and strangely 
fashioned piety, and forgotten in the medley 
we find a handful of the life of the past. We 
feel it in our hands, as we had never hoped to 
feel it ; and for its sake we pardon a multitude 
of sins. 

A great many details, quite absurd and trivial, 
which the Queen merely introduced because they 
really happened, surprise and delight us. From 
the very first novel of all we seem plunged in 
a strange world of contrast ; a world of beauti- 
ful light-minded ladies, who spend their time 
in broidering red silk counterpanes, in reading 



THE ''HEPTAMERON." 243 

*' La Belle Dame sans Merci," in devising in- 
terviews with their lovers, or in visiting the 
magician of the town to watch the wasting of 
wax effigies of those whom they would slay. 
Gallery was this wizard's name. It gives us a 
little shock to meet him in such modern and 
cultured society, but we find stranger flaws in 
this sumptuous civilization. Torture is still 
used in the civic trials of Alengon, where the 
Duke has absolute power of life and death, like 
any duke in Shakspeare's plays. Ten crowns is 
the proper wage for a hired assassin; and we 
are delighted to know the exact amount that 
we should pay him. Sanctuary is still given 
in palaces and churches, and the orthodox 
way to secure the ends of justice is by starving 
out the refugees. All this- seems out of date be- 
side the general spread of wealth and comfort. 
Even among the lower bourgeoisie, servants are 
to be found in every house, — engaged by the 
quarter, not by the year as in England. There 
is abundance of rich tapestries; in the humblest 
households the beds, even of the servants, are 
finely curtained, and the lit d'honneur is large 
enough to hold four or five persons. It is still 
considered a mark of esteem to invite a distin- 
guished guest to share the couch of the host and 
hostess. Yet in other respects there is no lack 



244 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

of privacy. The wives of the small burghers — 
of the clerks, the shopkeepers, the advocates — 
have dressing-rooms and parlors. Their houses 
have large gardens and orchards. There is 
plenty of room. There is, also, plenty of 
money. When the clerk's son goes to vv^oo 
the draper's daughter, he and his mother 
make a great purchase of thick silks, choos- 
ing everything they like (" for, as for money, 
you know how little in need of that sort of drug 
these shopkeepers are"). The women dress in 
fine taffetas, in silks, even in velvet, '* which once 
was only worn by women of good family." There 
is no dearth of good cheer, of comfort, even of 
luxury among these people, who may, none the 
less, be burned for heresy or witchcraft, or 
racked to death if they offend the law. The 
chief blot on this rich diffusion of wealth is the 
corruption of the clergy. The confessor, if all 
tales be true, is a real danger in every house- 
hold. The convents and monasteries offered 
more serious perils to innocent youth than 
even the thoughtless world outside. Mean- 
while society went smoothly on; deriving, per- 
haps, some satisfaction from the shortcomings of 
its spiritual pastors. It was a merry world, my 
Masters, but corrupt at the heart all the same. 
The corruption, of course, is especially in 



THE ''HEPTAMERONr 245 

evidence In the book before us ; for it was Mar- 
garet's object to expose the radical dangers of a 
ceHbate priesthood, the worldHness of a Church 
avowedly malcontent with merely spiritual power, 
and the gross ignorances which the popularity 
of the begging friars had introduced even into 
the pulpit and the confessional. Margaret had it 
greatly at heart to reform the Catholic Church, 
and of course the need of reform is emphasized 
in her novels. But the sense of general well- 
being and good-humor, of life and vigor and 
wealth, of a rising and influential bourgeoisie, — 
these signs of prosperity are quite intrinsic, 
quite natural and unconsidered. Immoral, lax, 
irreligious as it is, this world of the ** Hep- 
tameron " compares favorably enough with the 
world of the Italian novelists, full of wars, 
plague, cruelty, and unnatural vices ; although 
infinitely less pure, it has superior points to the 
world of Cervantes's '' Novelas," with its violent 
contrasts of squalid beggars and merchants from 
the Indies, fabulously rich, with its gold-fever in 
the air, its epidemic of vagabondage, its national 
blight of jealousy and slavery and persecution. 
It is still the world of Gargantua; although at 
the solemn Court of the Dauphin a more deco- 
rous world is already taking shape, — the ortho- 
dox world of Tartu ffe. 



246 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

This actuality is the true salt of the '' Hep- 
tameron." It is a document which instructs 
one in the life of France at that time ; - in the 
characters also of the rulers of France. Here 
one meets the King as he was in life, — light- 
minded, chivalric in battle, picturesquely mag- 
nanimous to the traitor who would have 
murdered him, a traitor himself to the advo- 
cate who would have served him. Free-liver 
and free-lover as he was, free-thinker almost 
(worst crime of all), one sees in the '' Hep- 
tameron " the dashing, effective qualities which 
secured to Francis the devotion of his subjects 
and the admiration of the world. Impetuous, 
impulsive, heroic at a pinch, the very qualities 
which made him an unsteady ruler made him a 
prince to adore. His reckless battles, his sudden 
determinations (one day for Luther, the next for 
the Inquisition; one day the friend of the Pope, 
the next of Soliman), his worship of beauty 
and pleasure, his pubHc magnificence, his affa- 
ble splendor, even his misfortunes, combined to 
give a most picturesque light and shade to his 
character. One can understand his popularity 
in a time when patriotism merely meant devo- 
tion to the Prince, in a time when the country 
was content to be the property of the ruler. 
For the Francis of the '' Heptameron " has 



THE ''HEPTAMERONr 247 

many popular qualities; he is brave, gallant, 
magnanimous, and cheerful. 

But if the '* Heptameron " instructs one in the 
character of Francis, far more striking is the por- 
trait which it gives of Margaret herself in her 
later youth and middle age, very different from 
the exquisite profile which Michelet has etched 
for us, though this is true enough, no doubt, of 
the Margaret of Meaux. We must none the 
less accept this later likeness, for the artist 
painted herself. No delicate profile this, — a 
full face, laughing, with shrewd humorous lips, 
and the great nose of Francis, grown coarser 
than in her girlish days ; a face that has expe- 
rienced many aspects of life and fortune, and has 
learned a tolerant clear-sightedness for their pre- 
tensions. No mystic's face now, with faint, un- 
decided features ; yet with a certain wistful and 
religious spirit in the eyes and in the smile, mak- 
ing her still hope to find in Heaven the virtue 
she so good-humoredly misses from the earth. 

In the eleventh novel of the " Heptameron" 
Margaret relates, under altered names, her ad- 
venture at the hunting-lodge of Bonnivet. She 
introduces herself: — 

" A lady of so good a family that there could be no 
better ; a widow, living with her brother who loved her 



248 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

dearly, who was himself a great lord and husband of a 
daughter of the King. This young Prince was greatly 
subject to his desires, loving the chase, pastimes, and 
dances, as youth requires ; and he had a very tiresome 
wife [the poor, holy, neglected, consumptive Claude], 
whom his pastimes did not please at all. Wherefore 
this Prince always took about with his wife his sister, 
who was of a joyous life, and was the best company 
possible, though at the same time a good woman and 
respectable ... a gay and pious lady, loving to laugh, 
though a princess and truly chaste. A widow, young, 
efi bo7i pointy and of a very good constitution . . . very 
strong . . . young and beautiful, living joyously in all 
society ... so amiable to her admirers that she can- 
not complain of their insults lest she should be sup- 
posed to have encouraged them. . . . Yet she goes 
with her head in the air, knowing the surety of her 
honor . . . many women (who lead a far austerer 
life than she) have not her virtue. ..." 

All through the *' Heptameron " the same 
traits recur, — the light-heartedness and free 
manners, the real virtue, the good-nature and 
worldliness. Sometimes, it is true, this great 
lady is spoken of as frequenting religious 
houses, and she is always awake to the exist- 
ence of a more spiritual life than her own. 
But above all things she is *' forte, de bonne 
complexion, de joyeuse vie." 



THE '' HEPTAMERONP 249 

This robustness of temper, this love of life, of 
health, strength, joy, splendor, this absorbing 
delight in physical and material details, is per- 
haps of all attributes the most exclusively Gallic. 
Rabelais and Balzac exemplify it in the highest 
degree; it is the especial flavor and quality 
of France. Margaret possessed it, singularly 
blended with a sincere but vague mysticism. 
And this robust naturalness is the foundation 
of her whole character. All natural virtues 
are hers : she is kindly affectionate, impul- 
sively generous, and compassionate. For her- 
self she fears suffering, so she would not let 
another suffer; yet, as she herself would die 
in torture for Francis, so, if necessary, she 
would exact from others a like sacrifice for 
him. Of abstract justice she has no ideal; 
neither of other abstract qualities, — honor, 
decency, morality, virtues that have been in- 
vented for the greater safety of the race. For 
all her mysticism, she has little sympathy with 
unembodied ideas. 

It is not that she is less virtuous than her 
neighbors, but her virtue takes a different turn. 
She and the Spaniards, whose influence is spread- 
ing far and wide, take their stand on different 
moralities. They stab their unfaithful wives and 
burn their heretics in gangs. To Margaret 



250 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

infidelity is tolerable, but not fanaticism ; murder, 
and not loose morals, excites her horror. Her 
respect for life is stronger than her respect for 
any moral code. 

And, with all its limitations, this gift of actu- 
ality was the one most needed by the age in 
which she lived. Born prematurely in the Dau- 
phin's Court, the seventeenth century was draw- 
ing on apace, -r- the seventeenth century, with its 
moonstruck romance, its genius for mathematics, 
its conflict of science and superstition, its perver- 
sities of torture and fanaticism. Loyola is already 
the General of the new Society of Jesus. The 
Guises are already grown. Already, at the Court 
of the King, sits, white and black as a moon 
in the clouds, the relentless beauty of Diana, 
■ — Diana, panoplied in her incestuous respec- 
tability ; Diana, the would-be dislnheritor of her 
Huguenot children ; Diana, to whom form is all 
and nature nothing. Already, under her fair, 
white bosom throbs the unnatural pulse of the 
age to come. 



DOWNFALL, 251 



CHAPTER XV. 

(1 544-1 545.) 

DOWNFALL. 

No sooner were the overtures to peace be- 
gun than Martin de Guzman, the Emperor's 
confessor, and the King's mistress, Madame 
d'Etampes, met to discuss between themselves 
the provisions of the treaty. Each was eager to 
secure a personal advantage from it, — De Guz- 
man the glory of a triumph over heresy, and 
Madame d'Etampes a place of shelter when the 
King should be no more. For many a weary 
month the pretty, cowardly, distracted Duchess 
had revolved her plans, and found no safety 
from the wrath to come, when Henry and 
Diana should reign. Bitterly she remembered 
the years of insults that she had heaped on 
" La Vieille," as she had nicknamed the Dau- 
phin's beautiful goddess, and she remembered 
her open antagonism to the victorious Em- 
peror. And even now she could not stay her 
bitter tongue. Day after day added some new 



252 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

revilement to the list. For she could not bring 
herself to repent; and since she would not 
amend, she must endeavor to escape. 

Anne de Pisseleu was a Huguenot in politics, 
and it was believed that she shared the New 
Ideas ; but when De Guzman demanded the 
suppression of heresy, we do not hear that she 
made any opposition. On her side she demanded 
— a court out of France and a princely revenue 
for her young champion the Duke of Orleans; 
a place for her to fly to and live in safety and 
brilliance when Francis should be dead. Let 
De Guzman settle this with his master, and she 
would answer for the scourging of the heretics. 

Then each of these honorable negotiators went 
to his work, — the monk to his Imperial peni- 
tent, the pretty Duchess to her King. Each 
carried the point, for each had bargained for a 
thing his master specially desired. The her- 
etics were as odious to the Most Christian 
Charles as to the Dominican himself Not 
many years were to elapse before the Emperor 
should take the cowl, and the monkish temper 
was already strong in him. Moreover, not only 
from motives of faith but for reasons of policy 
he wished to subdue the Lutherans. Since the 
Treaty of Smalkald in 1530 the Protestants of 
Germany had grown too strong. Anxious to 



DOWNFALL, 253 

avert an open rebellion, Charles had granted 
the Treaty of Nuremberg, allowing liberty of 
conscience to the Lutherans ; and the remem- 
brance of this concession was a thorn in his 
flesJi. Since then, also, the Protestants had 
gained in strength ; they would be hard sub- 
jects to master. Yet, till he had them at his 
feet, Charles could not be absolutely sure of 
his tenure. The league of Lutheran cities was 
strong. It included Constance, Nuremberg, 
Ulm, Strasburg, and Heilbronn, with eight 
other rich Imperial towns, backed by the States 
of Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg, Anhalt, and 
the two Luneburgs. Charles, ever long-sighted 
and keen, trembled lest the Kings of France and 
England should join this Protestant Confedera- 
tion. Henry VIII. had already shaken off the 
yoke of the Church. Francis was already too 
well with the Lutherans ; constantly irritated by 
the Sorbonne, constantly influenced by his semi- 
Lutheran sister, it was possible that he might 
dare the wrath of the Church and of the Em- 
pire to make the head of a league which should 
include both the Protestants and Soliman. 

Fatally blind to the larger interests of his king- 
dom, Francis, too, saw cause for gratulation in 
the peace. Firstly, it secured the Milanese, or, 
at worst, the Netherlands. The treaty also rid 



254 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

the kingdom of two powerful armies drawn up 
within a few leagues of Paris. However confi- 
dent the Dauphin might be in his successful 
generalship, Francis knew very well that Paris 
had hitherto been saved, not by the Dauphin, 
but by the disunion between the Emperor and 
Henry VHI. The treaty would free his king- 
dom of their dangerous conjunction, and it 
would bring many advantages to the Court, — 
a glorious provision for young Charles, a sur- 
cease from trouble to the King, whose wife lay 
in a nervous fever w^hile her brother made war 
on her husband. Her dangerous illness had 
touched her kind-hearted though unfaithful 
consort; he could not but remember how 
much he owed this nervous and saddened wo- 
man. Anne de Pisseleu, who was not so patient 
under disappointment, would be satisfied. And 
what, after all, would Francis resign? His word 
of honor, his influence in Europe, his indepen- 
dence, and the glory of his people. But none 
of these things can be seen or weighed ; none 
of them can be kept without continual struggle. 
Francis was old and tired. He found peace and 
plenty preferable to them all. 

So, on the i8th of September, 1544, Charles 
and Francis met at Crepy in Laonnois, Madame 
d'Etampes and Martin de Guzman, doubtless, 



DOWNFALL. 255 

among the attendant company. Between the 
King and the Emperor lay the treaty, yet un- 
signed. By its provisions the Emperor ceded 
to the young Duke of Orleans, at the expira- 
tion of two years, either his daughter Mary with 
the Netherlands, or Anne, his niece, dowered 
with the Milanese. The King, on his side, 
promised to bestow upon his second son a 
yearly revenue of a hundred thousand livres, 
secured on Bourbon, Orleans, Angouleme, and 
Chatellerault. In case these duchies did not 
yield the sum desired, that of Alengon should 
be taken from the much-enduring Margaret and 
added to the list. All mutual conquests since 
the Treaty of Nice were to be restored. It was 
further provided that the King should renounce 
his alliance with Soliman II., and withdraw his 
protection from the Protestant princes of Ger- 
many, and that he should undertake to subdue 
the power of the Turks ^ and arrest the progress of 
Heresy. So ran the treaty, with its promises of 
gold and treason. The King and the Emperor 
read it through. First one signed it, then the 
other. 

From that moment the influence of Spain was 
paramount in Europe ; France was no longer 
a rival. From that moment the Inquisition 
triumphed; that treaty authorized the Vaudois 



256 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

massacres, and decided the doom of the twelve 
hundred Huguenot gentlemen of Amboise; the 
knife was ground then that should serve to stab 
Coligny, and the signal given for the slaughter 
of St. Bartholomew. And at the same time 
the political influence of France was destroyed. 
She was made to ruin herself in the eyes of her 
natural allies. In reducing France to the con- 
dition of an Imperial province, Charles could 
afford to promise the King a governorship for 
his younger son. 

So the short war ended in far more perilous 
amity. All celebrated the occasion with rejoi- 
cings : Francis, Leonor, the young Duke, even 
Margaret herself, — Margaret the champion of 
the oppressed. In a long poem to her brother 
she entreats him not to forget, in suppressing 
heresy, to reform the Church. She sings a 
paean, strange in her mouth, over the triumph 
of the Holy Church and the reunion of Charles 
and Francis. No words are rich enough to 
express her rapture : " All other good or gain, 
compared to this, appears imperfect." And she 
concludes, '' This peace is of God, we are very 
sure." Little did Margaret divine over what 
graves she was chanting her hymns of victory. 

The Dauphin alone was angry and suspi- 
cious. His vanity as a general, his jealousy of 



DOWNFALL. 257 

his brother, were cruelly stung by this treaty, 
which closed a fortunate campaign with an 
ignoble truce, and gave the gain of the war to 
the Duke of Orleans, and all the loss to France. 
Gathering his nobles round him at Fontaine- 
bleau, he signed a solemn act of protest, wit- 
nessed by the Count of Anguien and the Duke 
of Guise. Though no high motives illumined 
him, at least he saw the iniquity of this treaty, 
and did his utmost to prevent it. But there 
was no one to listen to him. The King 
was hunting at Romorantin; the Queen of 
Navarre was writing stories in her castle at 
Alengon. 

Very soon the treaty began to bear its natu- 
ral fruit, — this treaty which Margaret praised 
in prose and verse; this pact of treason and 
derogation which she declared should give 
peace, *' not to us alone, but to all Christen- 
dom." Whom the Gods doom, first they mad- 
den. Surely some lunacy of vain belief infected 
France that day when 'she signed away her 
independence among such rejoicings; surely 
some craze had filmed the brain of the tolerant 
Queen of Navarre, when, laying will and con- 
science and judgment at her brother's feet, she 
praised the infamy which doomed so many inno- 
cent to death. 

17 



258 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

The peace was signed on the i8th of Sep- 
tember. No sooner was the King pledged to 
the cause of the Inquisition than Cardinal de 
Tournon began to supplicate him to extermi- 
nate the Vaudois from his kingdom ; and by the 
1st of January the King was convinced. 

Who were these Vaudois, — this tiny people, 
springing from Lyons in the twelfth century, 
and settled among the valleys of the Alps of 
Piedmont, — this scanty, timid herd of moun- 
tain folk, for whose destruction the Inquisition 
was invented? They were indeed a remnant, 
pursued with fire and sword from their earliest 
days ; burned alive in the twelfth century ; 
hacked to death in the thirteenth ; suffocated 
by hundreds under Francis I. ; roasted slowly, 
tortured, hurled like stones down the moun- 
tains, slaughtered in every diabolic fashion 
through the whole diabolic seventeenth cen- 
tury ; yet still surviving, unobtrusive and gentle 
as ever, with their simple faith and their plain, 
humble worship, unexterminated by the cruelty 
of ages. 

One Peter de Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, 
is said to be the ancestor of their faith. Before 
his death, in 1 170, this man, one of the numer- 
ous reformers who preceded the Reformation, 
had impressed the people of Lyons with his 



DOWNFALL. 259 

pure and noble faith. After his death the sect 
flourished, and in the thirteenth century it was 
found necessary to invent the Inquisition to de- 
stroy it. In his '' History of Popular Panthe- 
ism," M. Auguste Jundt has printed a singular 
account of the Vaudois left by Etienne de 
Belleville, a Dominican, who had charge of this 
Inquisition of 1233. 

" They absolutely refuse," the Inquisitor re- 
lates, " to obey the Roman Church, which they 
call the impure Babylon of the Apocalypse. 
For them, all good men are priests, having re- 
ceived from God the ordination which ecclesi- 
astics receive from men. They teach that it is 
sufficient to confess to God, and that God alone 
has the right to excommunicate." 

Splendid and difficult saying ! Often enough 
must the innocent and persecuted Vaudois have 
laid this precept, in sore extremity, to heart, — 
" God alone has the right to excommunicate." 
*'And," proceeds De Belleville, ''they believe 
not in prayers for the dead, since for them pur- 
gatory is only in this life." 

Ah ! Etienne de Belleville, worthy Inquisitor, 
do you believe that any dogma could declare 
more crucial sufferings to purify a tainted soul 
than those with which you visited these Vau- 
dois on earth? What else to them, indeed, 



260 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

did you make their life but one long purga- 
tory, one perpetual fear and horror, one lasting 
torment? 

" For them purgatory is in this world alone. They 
reject alike oaths and lies. They deny the right to 
execute justice or to make war, except on evil spirits. 
They allow meat on fast-days and work on Saints' 
days ; for, according to them, there are no other 
Saints than good men and women, here on earth. 
Likewise they hold it for a sin to adore the cross or 
the body of Christ, or to pay Peter's pence ; they call 
rich priests the children of the Devil, and refuse to 
consider the church or the churchyard a holier place 
than other ground, for they say the whole earth is 
equally blessed of God. They mock the singing of 
hymns and the tapers burning before the holy images ; 
and the days when churches and altars are consecrated 
they call, in derision, ' the Holy Days of Stones.' 

" Every good and holy man, they say, is the son of 
God, even as Christ Himself They acknowledge the 
Incarnation, Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection of 
Christ ; but by this they understand the conception, 
birth, and spiritual resurrection of the man made per- 
fect through penitence. For them the true Passion of 
Jesus is the martyrdom of the just, and the veritable 
Sacrament is the conversion of man, for in that man- 
ner is made the Body of Christ. 

" Nevertheless, they differ much among themselves, 
according as they be more or less attainted by these 



DOWNFALL. 261 

errors. Nearly all agree that the soiil of every good 
man is the Holy Spirit, that is to say, God. But there 
are some among them of less evil sentiments, whose 
error is that every worthy man can make the body of 
Christ in the Eucharist in pronouncing the words pre- 
scribed. I have seen one such heretic in the flames, 
who, placed before the altar, beheved herself able to 
consecrate the bread and wine, and she a woman. I 
have heard a mother and daughter, attainted with 
these same errors, although not of one mind on cer- 
tain points, make proof of a profound knowledge of 
the propositions they defended. Both of them were 
burned." 

It will be seen that these persecuted Vaudois 
had much in common with the modern sect of 
Quakers. Like their younger and more for- 
tunate brethren, they would not swear and 
would not lie. War was no less to them than 
murder. They believed in no hierarchy, but 
only in the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. And 
for holding these tenets they were slaughtered 
and tormented throughout five centuries. 

Like the Quakers, the Vaudois were a quiet, 
even a timid people. They did not seek the 
notice or the glory of the world. The life they 
loved the best was that of their lonely Alpine 
valleys, the simple days of shepherding among 
the fairy-haunted hills, the evenings when the 



262 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

head of every house read, in his own dialect, 
the Bible to his assembled children ; the burst- 
ing of the flowers in spring (flowers which the 
Fantines, the Vaudois fairies, watch and water 
every day until they blow) ; the long days out 
on the hills in summer, when the cattle are led 
to the upper meadows ; the cheerful harvest, 
when all work together, fathers, sons, daughters, 
and mothers, and the mother sets her baby's 
cradle among the standing corn for the fairies 
to guard during her absence, for the fairies to 
rock and sing to sleep, and to brush the flies 
from his forehead with their gauzy wings ; 
lastly, the bitter winter, when the whole house- 
hold sit in the stables for warmth, while the 
father reads the psalms and the women sing 
songs of elves and fairies. 

They are still left, — some of the Vaudois 
fairy-songs. Innocent, charming little ballads, 
as simple as nursery-rhymes, it is strange to 
find them, so sweet and harmless, among the 
gaunt and horrible memories of crime, slaugh- 
ter, and agony, with which the Inquisition has 
seared the pleasant Vaudois meadows. They 
are more touching than any tale of martyrdom, 
— these happy, childish little songs, which 
sprang up so sweetly in the gentle Vaudois 
hearts. Two of them shall stand here, and 



DOWNFALL. 263 

remind us of the life these quiet people led in 
their interval of quiet before the early spring 
of 1545. 

For many years there had been peace. True, 
that in 1540 the Cardinal de Tournon had se- 
cured a writ condemning the head of every 
household to flame and sword ; but before the 
fearful execution had been carried out, the good 
William du Bellay had obtained a reprieve, and 
the quiet of the green Vaudois valleys was still 
unspotted and calm. By their children's cots 
the mothers sang; and the maidens sang, over 
their churning and spinning, the old, sweet, 
monotonous fairy-songs. Sometimes the young 
voices sang in question and answer. One 
would take the fairy's part, — 

" What are you doing here, you fair little bride ?" 

And the sister would answer, — 

" I have lost my way ; I have torn my frock beside. 
I have lost my way in the gorse ; it tore my feet, 
And never, never I '11 reach the village street." 

And the first voice would ring out clear again, — 

" Come, little shepherdess, come ; it is not near; 
Yet reach your hand and come along, my dear." 

Or in her long solitudes, when all the household 
was out of doors, and she alone in the dark 



264 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

little house with the baby at her breast, the 
mother would sing a strange little song of the 
Vaudois mountains, with their mists and rain- 
bows, and clouds that suddenly blot the fields 
from sight and as suddenly pass away. Of 
course it is all in fairy guise : — 

" 'T was I who saw the fairy ; 
She stood and spread around 
Her misty skirts in vapor 
On the crests of Bariound. 

" Where'er the fairy wandered 
A serpent went as well : 
A rainbow-colored serpent, 
On the summit of Castel. 

*' Like Traveller's Joy in blossom. 
Like snow upon the pass. 
She drifted o'er the mountain. 
Nor ever touched the grass. 

" Now all my sheep had rambled. 
' Come hither up the steep, 
Come hither,' cried the fairy, 
' And I will find the sheep.' " 1 

A timid, gentle, visionary race, they lived in 
their secluded upland valleys, thankful when 
the cruel world forgot them for a time, — a 
race of shepherds and martyrs, not of heroes. 

1 Muston. See Michet, " Reforme," Appendix. 



DOWNFALL. 265 

They could not do battle for their faith and 
wrestle for centuries with a stronger power, 
like the indomitable Huguenots of La Rochelle. 
They could not fight, but they could suffer; 
and their mild persistence it was impossible to 
subdue. 

In 1530 the tidings of the Reform had pene- 
trated into these quiet valleys. The Vaudois 
heard with delight that the faith which they 
had held through pain and death for centuries 
had arisen, stronger and more able, in the 
crowded world outside. They opened a corre- 
spondence with Bucer and Farel, and in 1536 
they formally gave in their adhesion to the 
Church of Geneva. Thus, the Vaudois thought 
to strengthen their position, to make themselves 
more redoubtable to their enemies, and to avoid 
the introduction of strange doctrines into their 
belief; for they remembered still how in the 
thirteenth century the insidious pantheism of 
Amaury de Bene had won nearly half the 
Vaudois from their early faith. They took 
Geneva for a standard and defence. In reality, 
by allying themselves with the Reform they 
made themselves doubly obnoxious in the eyes 
of Rome. 

Since that year of 1536 the Cardinal de Tour- 
non had kept an angry watch upon them. In 



266 MARGARET OF ANGOULAmE. 

1540 he nearly gained his ends. There were 
at that moment ten thousand Vaudois house- 
holds. The Cardinal beheved he had made a 
good bag; but before the writ could be car- 
ried out Francis had projected his alliance 
with the Porte, in which case he would need 
to conciliate the German Lutheran princes. 
The King willingly let himself be led by Du 
Bellay into cancelling the writ. He had no 
natural taste for murder, and he was glad to 
let these Vaudois live, — these Vaudois, whom 
the good King Louis XIL had declared to be 
better Christians than himself 

But as soon as the Treaty of Crepy was 
signed the Cardinal saw his chance. Political 
necessity no longer bound the most Christian 
King to curry favor with heretics ; on the con- 
trary, he was pledged to conciliate Spain, to 
forward the holy office of the Inquisition. A 
campaign against the Vaudois would push his 
chances not only in heaven but on earth. Thus 
argued the Cardinal, not without effect; and 
about Christmas-time he clinched his argument 
with a most plausible and likely proof of 
treachery on the part of this nest of heretics. 
They were not only heretics, but most contuma- 
cious rebels, so the Cardinal affirmed. And he 
assured the King of a plot laid among them. 



DOWNFALL. 267 

discovered by D'Oppede, the fanatic governor 
of Provence, to seize the city of Marseilles and 
make it a centre for heresy and rebellion. 

It is scarcely possible that either Francis or 
the Cardinal could have believed these simple 
shepherds capable or even anxious to secure 
a town which had defied the greatest strength 
of France and Spain. The plea was absurd; 
but it suited the purpose of the Cardinal to 
affect belief in it, and the King had not the 
courage to contradict him. William du Bellay 
had died the year before. Margaret was away 
at Alengon, and De Tournon was at hand. 
The King was weak, ill, sorely in need of peace 
and quiet. He felt that a proof of his devotion 
to the Catholic faith was really desirable after 
his clemency at La Rochelle and his alliance 
with the Turks. By the Treaty of Crepy he was 
bound to crush out heresy, and if the treaty 
were not carried out, there would be no Milan- 
ese for Charles. Besides, if these people were 
rebels and heretics, they deserved a punish- 
ment. So the King let himself be fatally 
persuaded to a crime which casts an ever- 
lengthening horror on his name. On New 
Year's Day he signed the writ. It was a " re- 
vocation," he was told. The King did not 
read it, but he signed his name. 



268 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. ■ 

It was more difficult to procure the other 
necessary signatures. The Secretary of State 
refused. He was not old and ill and weak ; he 
had no younger son to place ; he could afford 
a conscience, and refused. The Cardinal made 
L'Aubespin sign instead. It was necessary also 
that the Procureur-du-Roi should sign it. He 
refused. His substitute refused. The Chancel- 
lor's signature must also witness the writ, and 
he again refused. The Cardinal set a chance 
seal to it, and gave it to the messenger of the 
Parliament of Provence, who stood waiting for 
it at the door. 

When the President, D'Oppede, read the 
paper, he found it better than a mere revoca- 
tion of the pardon of 1541; for the writ of 
1540 had merely condemned to death the head 
of every household, confiscated the property 
of the heretics, ordered every house to be 
razed, every orchard to be uprooted, every tree 
to be burned as accursed ; but this new writ, 
which the King had never read, condemned all 
to death alike, — all men and women, children 
and babies at the breast. The heretics were to 
be exterminated, root and branch. 

D'Oppede no sooner received the writ than 
swiftly and silently he marched upon the seven- 
teen Vaudois villages. Several of them were 



DOWNFALL. 269 

situate in the Papal territory of Avignon, but 
he easily procured permission to invade them 
in so good a cause. D'Oppede marched on at 
the head of a strange and ferocious army ; they 
were the soldiers from the galleys whom he 
led, a fierce and reckless crowd. Yet even they 
paused when they discovered that no war, but 
sheer slaughter, was before them. D'Oppede 
had at first some difficulty in cheering them on 
to the general pillage, slaughter, and rapine. But 
having once tasted blood, they entered into the 
spirit of their crusade. They began by destroy- 
ing Cabrieres and Merindol with fire ; all that ran 
out of the flames were cut down by the soldiery. 
In one church four hundred women and chil- 
dren who had sheltered there were slaughtered 
in one day. The rude galley soldiers learned 
new devices and caprices in the art of murder ; 
they discovered a thousand ways to send a 
heretic to hell. On they marched, leaving 
behind them smoking ruins, and uprooted or- 
chards, skeletons, and corpses, where they had 
found the pious shepherds content in their fairy- 
haunted homes. The poor Fantines must have 
fled aghast from this new world of flames and 
shrieking. No home was safe ; even under the 
earth the soldiers found their victims, in the 
deep recesses of the mountain caves. 



270 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

The Vaudois, it seemed, were silenced for- 
ever. Even the Cardinal de Tournon was sat- 
isfied ; and from the whole of Europe went up 
a tremendous shout of praise or blame. 

Spain praised loudly. Spain, continually 
persecuting two entire nations, the Jews and 
the Moors ; Spain, whose Autos daily sent 
the smoke of their human sacrifice to the 
blue heaven ; whose Inquisition in forty 
years condemned over forty thousand here- 
tics; whose armies in one year (1570) sent 
fifty thousand Moors to death or slavery; 
Spain, the cruel, pure-eyed fanatic, piously 
setting a world in flames for the greater glory 
of God, — Spain applauded. 

But Switzerland, Germany, England, the nat- 
ural allies of France, shrank back from her in 
horror. The Treaty of Crepy had already 
done its worst. France was France no longer. 
France, which in 1543 could afford to say, " For 
the last thousand years and more I have been 
the haven and refuge of the afflicted and op- 
pressed," ^ — France in 1545 became a mere 
feeble copy and hanger-on of Spain. 

Meanwhile, France herself was sorely divided. 
The Cardinal de Tournon, the Sorbonne, and 
its adherents triumphed. Margaret must have 

1 " Harangue de Jean de Montluc aux Venitiens/' Ribier. 



DOWNFALL. 2/1 

wept, I think; though, strangely enough, we 
possess no letter of hers interceding for the 
hunted Vaudois. Perhaps in her northern 
castle she did not hear the news until too 
late; the King, we may be sure, would keep 
silence. Perhaps, remembering the treaty just 
witnessed, she knew that she had lost the right 
to intercede. Perhaps, believing De Tournon's 
report, she thought of these Vaudois not as mar- 
tyrs, but as rebels who would wage a civil war 
against her brother ; and for her brother's sake 
she could be very hard. We remember the 
marriage of the brave little Jeanne, and we 
know that Margaret had no mercy in her 
heart for those who questioned the authority 
of the King. But in any case she must have 
been most miserable, — whether because her 
brother's kingdom seemed crumbling to ashes 
in his hand, or because of a cruel unnecessary 
sacrifice of innocent lives, a sacrifice that once 
she might have prevented, and which she had 
no longer the influence to prevent. These must 
have been wretched days to Margaret, for her 
life, it appeared, had been used in vain. 

The King himself was aghast, ashamed. 
When the tidings of the massacre reached 
him, he sent for D'Oppede ; and it required 
all the influence of De Tournon to save that 



2/2 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

violent baron from a violent end. Francis de- 
clared that his commands had been cruelly 
exceeded ; and though D'Oppede escaped 
with his hfe, he left the Court a disgraced 
and branded man. 

The ruins of the Vaudois villages were still 
warm and smoking, the eagles and vultures still 
swooped down on the unburied corpses in the 
trampled Vaudois meadows, the fierce autumn 
heats made that place of desolation a place of 
pestilence and danger still, when Francis and 
his favorite son, the Duke of Orleans (for 
whose sake all these things were done), set 
out for Boulogne to make one last effort to 
recover the port from the English before sign- 
ing the treaty with Henry VIII. The plague 
ravaged the French and English camps, so that 
more than a hundred soldiers died every day in 
the huddled army before Boulogne. There was 
no time to dig graves for the dead. With a ter- 
rible sang froid the sick were laid together in 
thatched huts outside the camp ; and then, 
when all were dead, the walls and roofs were 
battered down over the corpses, and this was 
all their burial. No wonder that the dreadful 
sickness spread throughout the country. Having 
arrived at Foret-Moutier, a little town close to 
Abbeville, the young Duke of Orleans was not 



DOWNFALL. 273 

pleased with the quarters allotted to him for the 
night. In the same house he found a finer suite 
of rooms, and was about to establish himself in 
them, when the host in great alarm begged him 
to go back to his old lodging, for in the rooms 
which he had chosen several people had lately- 
died of the plague. *^ Well and good ! " cried 
Charles. '' Never a son of France has died of 
the pest ! " And, laughing at the horror of his 
host, the madcap youth called to his compan- 
ions to come and show how little he was afraid. 
The wild young nobles drew their swords, and, 
tossing on their^ rapiers the infected pillows of 
the bed, they played at ball till the feathers flew 
all over the room and covered the rash players 
as with snow. Aghast the host looked on in 
the doorway. 

When night came on, the young Duke re- 
tired to rest in this infected chamber. About 
two hours later, he awoke with violent thirst 
and pains in the head and limbs. ** I am ill," 
he cried. " It is the plague, and I shall die." 
He then asked for a glass of water. For two or 
three days he lay in thirst, in pain and delirium ; 
Francis lay in another chamber of that house, 
ill with anxiety and fatigue. But on the third 
day the Duke recovered consciousness and 
earnestly requested to see his father. The 



274 MARGARET OF ANGOULl^ME. 

message was taken, and Francis rose from his 
bed and declared that he would go. The Car- 
dinal de Tournon remonstrated in vain, urging 
that the fever was fatally contagious. But 
Francis was not to be moved from his pur- 
pose; he entered the chamber of his son 
alone. 

The young Duke, haggard, exhausted, could 
not raise himself upon his pillows ; but he bade 
his attendants lift him up, and stretching out his 
arms to the poor, half-fainting King, he cried, 
'' Ah, Sire, I am dying ! But now that I see 
you again, I die content." The effort was too 
much ; the Duke fell back on his pillow, too 
weak to utter another word. In a few minutes 
he was dead; and the King, stricken as by a 
thunderbolt, was carried from the room in a 
swoon. It was the 13th of September, 1545. 

So ended the fair promises of Crepy, — ex- 
actly one year and ten days after the signing of 
the treaty; exactly a year before any benefit 
could have accrued to France therefrom. 



nerac in 1545. 275 



CHAPTER XVI. 

NERAC IN 1545. 

While mourning and remorse filled the Court 
of France, the little Court of Nerac had settled 
into the inactive peace of disillusion. Even the 
sanguine King believed no more in the promise 
of Francis to restore his kingdom. Even the 
visionary Queen could hope no longer for the 
reconciliation of the Church with Luther. Age, 
with its calms and compromises, was settling 
over Navarre. 

Margaret, with every year becoming more 
estranged from her husband, with every year 
more resigned to this estrangement, occupied 
herself with good works. She spent the greater 
part of her income in pensions to the poor of 
her kingdom, charging herself with a little nation 
of orphans, of afflicted, of aged and decrepit per- 
sons, whose living she provided. She sent large 
sums also to the Lutheran refugees in Switzer- 
land and Germany. On herself she spent very 
little. 



276 MARGARET OF ANGOL/L^ME. 

The black dress, edged with fur, the pleated 
white chemisette, which she had assumed on 
the death of her baby son, was a fashion from 
which she had never since departed. Her hair 
neatly put away beneath a nun-like coif; her 
figure, fuller now than in her youth, in its 
tightly fitting, sober garb; her face, blond and 
placid, with its wistful smile, — so we know her, 
in the portrait of Janet, her court-painter, and 
brother of the greater Janet. And she seems 
to us like some calm and gentle abbess, ruling 
rather a convent than a court. It v/as, indeed, 
a quiet and orderly existence which she led, 
supervising her charities, ordering her house- 
hold, maintaining an immense correspondence. 
In the afternoons, as she sat at her broidery (a 
work in which she excelled), she kept two sec- 
retaries by her side. One, on the right, took 
down her letters from her dictation ; and the 
other wrote the verses she made aloud from 
time to time in the pauses of her other work. 

The mass of poems thus composed — fluent, 
inconsequent, empty as the verse of an impro- 
visatore — was at this time being set ready for 
publication, and appeared in 1547, under the 
title of '' Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des 
Princesses." Here we find not only her early 
spiritual verses, not only the "Myrouer" which 



NERAC in ISJiB. 277 

so excited the wrath of the Sorbonne, and 
which Ehzabeth of England translated, not 
only the charming rondeaux and ballads writ- 
ten to the King in captivity, but verse of a 
much later date. Margaret had never been so 
busy with her pen as now that her active influ- 
ence was in abeyance. In 1542 she had written 
" La Coche," a subtle dissertation on the best 
way of loving, which the praise of Francis in- 
spires for a moment with true poetry and 
pathetic fervor. In 1544 she had completed 
the '' Heptameron ; " and now she was busy 
writing and revising a whole accumulation : 
spiritual songs, with a certain faded pathos in 
them, charming and not quite sincere ; long 
meditations, prayers, and triumphs of a fluent 
learned piety, well supplied with texts ; inno- 
cent boarding-school farces, on marriage, on 
faith as the best physician, on " Too much, 
plenty, little, and less, — "a sort of insipid 
rhymed Proverbs not devoid of a pleasant 
feminine substitute for humor; also, strange 
in the midst of these, a savage, passionate 
outburst against the cruelty of the Inquisi- 
tion ; and, bound up with all this medley of 
old-fashioned piety and sisterly devotion, a 
series of four Mysteries, interspersed by 
exquisite and charming Pastorals. 



2/8 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Of these Mysteries, or Comedies, as Mar- 
garet prefers to call them, that on the Nativity 
far excels the three others, — the Desert, the 
Innocents, and the Adoration of the Kings. 
Nothing more delicate, more sweetly fantastic, 
than this strange, light little comedy, this re- 
ligious operetta. Joseph sings a tripping sort 
of Vaudeville to welcome the Holy Babe ; and 
then the scene shifts, and the Bergerie begins. 

The shepherds and shepherdesses of Pales- 
tine are sitting on the grass at evening, watch- 
ing their folded flocks. They relate the work 
of the day to each other and then lie down to 
sleep, — all in a sort of song, — when one of 
them remarks the unusual brightness of the 
stars. At this point appears a choir of sing- 
ing angels who tell of the birth of Christ. 
Then, when the heavenly voices all are hushed, 
the wondering youths and maidens sing a 
Nowell, charming in its light, swift touch and 
dancing metres. 

Chorus of Shepherds and Shepherdesses. 

Come let us hasten, journeying 

To see the Child and Mother bright 

Of whom the angels, carolling, 

Have sung sweet homihes to-night : 

Siftg Nowell, let the Nowell ring. 
For Christ is given to us ontright. 



NERAC in 151,5. 279 

Sophron'ms and Philitine. 
To their poor household let us bring 
Of all our store a bounteous freight. 

Dorothy. 
This cheese shall be my plenishing, 
In frame of rushes neatly dight. 

Chorus. 

Sing Nowell, let the Nowell ring, 
For Christ is given to us outright. 

Christilla. 
And I for Mary's nourishing 
Have milk new-drawn and creamy white. 

Philitine. 

I '11 give my cage : therein shall sing 
My bird, to please her, an it might. 

Chorus. 

Sing Nowell, let the Nowell ring, 
For Christ is given to us outright. 

Elpison. 
These fagots of my gathering 

Shall warm them in their wintry plight. 

Nephele. 
My flutd shall be my offering ; 
The Child shall hear it with delight. 

Chorus. 
Sing Nowell, let the Nowell ring. 
For Christ is given to tis outright. 



280 MARGARET OF ANGOULtME. 

Sophronius. 

I '11 run upon their heralding, 

For I the best know wrong from right. 

Philitine. 
His face I '11 kiss, in worshipping. 

Christilla. 
Ah no, the heel 's too holy, quite. 

Chorics. 

Sing Nowelly let the Nowell ring, 
For Christ is give?i to tis outright. 

These charming comedies were acted at 
Nerac, with other farces less innocent and 
pretty. *' Pour nous divertir, nous faisons 
moineries et farces," writes Margaret; and 
these monkeries, of which the *' Inquisitor " 
alone remains, were, we may well believe, 
conceived in the spirit of Marot's " Frere Lu- 
bin." They, and her patr(3nage of Lutheran 
refugees, brought Margaret into such disre- 
pute with the Catholic party that an attempt 
was made to poison her at her own table ; 
and one day Henry of Navarre, it is said, 
weary of these continual troubles, boxed his 
illustrious consort on the ears, exclaiming, 
"Madame, you want to know too much!" It 
was difficult for Margaret to satisfy at once her 
husband, her brother, her Lutheran teachers, 



NJ^RAC IN 15Ji5. 281 

and her own liberal conscience. Sometimes 
that credulous and tolerant conscience led her 
sorely astray. In this year of 1545 she shel- 
tered in her hospitable Court two would-be Lu- 
therans, dressed as monks, named Quentin and 
Pocques. These men speedily rose to eminence 
at Nerac. Their vague spiritualism, their insid- 
ious, amorous mysticism, was quite to the taste 
of the little Court there. Margaret, ever dense, 
and now quite bewildered by a long experience 
of gallantry and mysticism, saw nothing to blame 
in their tenets. But after some while Calvin, 
at Geneva, hearing of these new lights of Na- 
varre, made inquiries. He was scandalized when 
he learned the truth. These men, the princi- 
pals of the infamous sect of Libertines, or 
Brothers of the Free Spirit, had been exiled 
from State to State, shunned by all for their 
impious and monstrous doctrines, for the de- 
bauchery and vice of their behavior. He 
wrote to the Queen, his old protectress, and 
let her hear in no honeyed terms what were 
these ministers of hers. Then Quentin and 
Pocques, those prosperous refugees, had to be 
dismissed ; but the spirit of moral relaxation, 
the vague mysticism which had tolerated their 
presence, could not be sent as easily away. 
For in the time of political emptiness, in the 



282 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

pause following the death of the Duke of 
Orleans, Margaret's spirit, no longer braced 
by the large air of the world's affairs, had be- 
come enervated and languid and dreamy. Her 
visionary disposition asserted itself more and 
more. Her imagination, so easily transported, 
dwelt more and more on subtilized religion and 
subtilized passion, fused into one strange, all- 
engrossing mood in that uncritical mind of hers. 
A pretty tale that Brantome tells of her at this 
time gives a sudden insight into this tender and 
unworldly attitude. 

I tell the story almost in Brantome's words. 
The brother of Brantome, Jean de Bourdeille, 
destined in his youth for the Church, had been 
sent to Ferrara, then almost a French colony 
under the Duchess Renee of France, to finish 
his studies. There he met a charming young 
French widow, Madame de la Roche, with whom 
the young seminarist fell passionately in love. 
He threw up his career, and bringing his lady 
to the shelter of Margaret's Court at Nerac, set 
off to the wars in Piedmont. Six months after- 
wards Captain de Bourdeille returned. His first 
visit was to Pau, where his mother was, and also 
the Queen of Navarre. He met the Queen com- 
ing out of church after vespers. She, la meil- 
lenre princes se du mondey turned, and led him 



nErac in 1545. 283 

into the deserted church. There for some time 
they talked together, walking to and fro, speak- 
ing of Italy, Piedmont, of the wars, but not a 
word of Madame de la Roche. Suddenly Mar- 
garet stopped, and seizing the hand of Bour- 
deille, she said, in a changed voice, " My 
cousin, do you feel nothing move beneath 
your feet ? " **No, Madame," he replied. 
" But, think well, my cousin," she insisted. '' I 
have thought, Madame, but nothing moves ; for 
a firm flagstone is underneath my feet." " Then 
I will tell you," said the Queen. *' You are 
over the tomb and the body of that poor young 
Madame de la Roche, who is buried here be- 
neath you, and whom you loved so much. And 
since our souls still feel after our death, you 
must not doubt that this honest creature, dead 
for your sake, felt a thrill as soon as you stepped 
upon her grave. And if you did not feel it, be- 
cause of the thickness of the tomb, you must 
not doubt but it was real. And since it is a 
pious office to hold the dead in memory, and 
even those whom one has loved, I pray you to 
give her a Pater-noster, an Ave Maria, and a 
De Profundis, and to sprinkle her with holy 
water; and thus you will acquire the name of 
a very faithful lover and a good Christian. I 
will leave you, then, for that, and go away." 



284 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

In such a mood as this — tenderly cynical, 
melancholy, dreamy — Margaret ruled over her 
Court of Navarre in these latter days of general 
desceuvremejtt which followed on the death of 
Charles of Orleans. 



DEATH OF THE KING. 285 



CHAPTER XVII. 

DEATH OF THE KING. 

''The Queen of Navarre looks very delicate," 
wrote Marino Cavalli in 1542, — "so delicate, I 
fear she has not long to live. Yet she is so 
sober and moderate, that after all she may last. 
She is, I think, the wisest not only of the women 
but of the men in France. No one knows more 
than she, either of the conduct of State affairs or 
of the secrets of rehgion. But I fear she is nigh 
to death." 

With every year she had grown a little weaker, 
but still she was alive. So long as her brother 
lived, Margaret believed she could not die, nor 
continue living after his decease. In this winter 
of 1545 she was far from him in Beam, tortured 
with rheumatism, sleeplessness, and fever, weak- 
ening with the slow consumption that wore away 
her life ; but all her thoughts were for Francis. 
She did not complain, sitting between her two 
secretaries, dictating her letters to the one, and 
to the other her stories or her verses ; but they 



286 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. ^ 

could tell when her pain was hard to bear, for 
she would start up crying, " I fear the King is 
worse," and anxiously look out along the snowy 
roads to see if any courier were on the way from 
Paris ; so firmly convinced was her loving heart 
that she and her brother held their lives and suf- 
ferings in common. ' Indeed, the King was very 
ill that year. He could not rest in that palace 
which it had been the great business of his life 
to adorn. He found no consolation now in the 
"fayre tables with histories right finely wrought," 
which only a few years ago he had shown with 
such leisurely triumph and delight to the as- 
tounded Wallup. He could not sleep now in 
the Royal bed-chamber, which, wrote Wallup, 
" I do assure your Majestie is very singulier, 
as well with antycall borders as with a costly 
seeling and chemney." And when he walked 
in the gallery, where were Cellini's statues and 
Primaticcio's casts, *' the most magnifique gal- 
lereye I had ever seen with, betwixt every win- 
dowe, great antycall personages standing entier," 
doubtless King Francis remembered how he had 
shown these treasures also, a little while ago, to 
his good friend and guest and brother-in-law, 
the Emperor. 

All of Francis's life was poisoned by his en- 
mity of Charles. He laid plans and schemes 



DEATH OF THE KING. 287 

for beginning the war again, and on a grander 
scale than heretofore. Between the winter of 
1545 and the winter of 1546 he traversed the 
frontier of his kingdom, inspecting every town 
in Burgundy and Champagne, hurrying on the 
work of fortification, himself distributing the 
necessary moneys. For war seemed imminent 
at any moment, though Francis, weary and 
disheartened, was readier for enmity than for 
actual battle; but in the early spring of 1549 
he received a shock which sent all thoughts of 
a campaign far from his spirit for the time. 

On the 28th of January Henry of England 
died. This news was a thunderbolt for Francis, 
who since the English treaty had slipped back 
into his old terms of friendship with his neigh- 
bor. They were of the same age and the same 
constitution. They had known each other from 
youth up ; each was gallant and frank, though 
the lovable light-mindedness of Francis incurred 
the contempt of Henry's brutal strength ; and 
ever since the memorable day when Francis 
had forced his way into the King of England's 
tent on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the 
French King had entertained a true liking for 
his neighbor, which outlasted many a sudden 
quarrel and breach of the peace. In one pro- 
found sentence Gaillard has condensed the 



288 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

relations of Francis with his neighbors : " Charles 
V. greatly injured Francis and disliked him 
little ; Francis hated him, and loved Henry 
VIIL, by whom he was hated, and who was 
jealous of him." 

In the last days of January our English Henry 
died, and by the end of February Francis was 
seriously ill. He had contracted a slow fever, 
which day by day consumed his long-diminished 
strength. He tried to brace himself against its 
ravages, but the means he took to strengthen 
his frame only left it weaker. The chase, his 
life-long passion, possessed him with redoubled 
craving at the last. He wandered from place 
to place, from province to province, hunting 
through all his forests all day long, • — himself, 
all night, a prey to agony and fever. 

Always ill, always weaker, always in the 
saddle, he led his weary Court from St. Ger- 
main to La Muette, thence to Villepreux and 
Dampierre, then on to Limosin, where he 
meant to pass the carnival. But after a rest of 
two or three days his fever hunted him on. 
The air did not suit him in that place. In a 
milder atmosphere he thought he might be 
stronger; so, scarcely able to travel, he led 
his retinue to Loches in Touraine. He was no 
better. He was indeed so much weaker that 



DEATH OF THE KING. 289 

for some while he was compelled to sojourn 
there ; and when he was able to set out again, 
he decided to turn his face homewards, and 
made for St. Germain, his favorite and usual 
resort. 

On the way thither he had to pass Rambouil- 
let, where he determined to rest for a night. 
But on arriving there he remembered many a 
glorious day in youth, when he had hunted 
the boar through the forests round the castle. 
He ordered a great boar-hunt for the morrow. 
The courtiers, with the Dauphin at their head, 
waited anxiously on that morning, wondering if 
the King would appear. The agonies that his 
abscess had caused him, the prostration that 
had laid him low at Loches, his unfixed, hesi- 
tating, and uncertain mind, — all rendered it 
unlikely. But lo ! down the great staircase 
comes the King, something of his old majesty 
in the poise of his unwieldy figure, and in his 
swollen, altered features a little of their youthful 
grace and animation. It is as though the hero 
of Christendom, the Francis of Marignano and 
Pavia, were alive again, — the Francis whose 
prowess in war and in the chase was the theme 
of every Court in Europe. All day long this 
fair, deceitful mirage lasts. The horn winds, 
the hounds yelp, the hunters ride through the 

19 



290 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

glades of the green forest ; and Francis is first 
of all, swiftest and most vigorous. Like a man 
under a charm, he feels neither fatigue nor 
anguish, neither the languor of his wasting 
fever nor the darting and throbbing of his 
wound. 

All day he hunts ; but on returning to the 
castle he is so prostrate that he at once retires 
to sleep. A healthy fatigue, no doubt; in the 
morning he will be stronger. 

Alas ! houj by hour his fever increased, the 
pangs of his internal wound became more and 
more intolerable. What expiation there may 
be in personal suffering was his at the last ; no 
Vaudois suffered more than he that night, no 
Berquin in his chariot of fire. Suddenly all pain 
ceased. The abscess had begun to mortify, and 
his physicians announced to Francis that he had 
not many hours to live. 

Francis thereupon sent for the Dauphin, and 
commended his kingdom to him in words so 
wise and sober they make us marvel the mon- 
arch ruled no better who could advise so well. 
'' Never recall Montmorency, keep in check the 
Guises, diminish the taxes." Such were the 
dying counsels of the King, — counsels that 
if followed would have averted twenty years 
of civil wars, the ruin of the Valois, and the 



DEATH OF THE KING. 29 1 

massacre of St. Bartholomew. He also recom- 
mended the Cardinal de Tournon and Admiral 
d'Annebaut to the good offices of his son. And 
having rid himself of earthly cares, he died, a 
firm Catholic, free from pain at the last, on the 
31st of March, 1547, in the fifty-third year of 
his age. It is with a shock that we find him 
still so young. During the last seven years of 
his life he had been not merely old, but super- 
annuated. ' 

More than a fortnight lapsed before Margaret 
heard of her brother's death. None dared to 
tell her of that last, most dread calamity. All 
the winter long she had been ailing and in great 
distress about her brother. Her ladies often 
discovered her in tears, and she would tell 
them that she feared the King was very ill, and 
should he die, she was sure she would not long 
survive him. It was a severe winter ; so cold, 
that for weeks together the delicate, declining 
Queen could not leave her special suite of 
rooms in the great castle of Pau. The deep 
snows retarded the arrival of the couriers from 
Paris, for whose coming Margaret watched and 
feared and hoped all day and all night. The 
close, pent-up life, the long suspense, told 
heavily on her fragile constitution, and deepened 
her consumptive taint. 



292 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

With the breaking of the frosts Margaret 
went from Pau to the convent of Tusson, in the 
Angoumais, in order to pass the season of Lent 
in retreat among the nuns. Her constant and 
growing anxiety haunted her there no less 
than in the world. The fasts and vigils of Lent 
weakened her yet more, and rendered her ever- 
visionary brain peculiarly subject to dreams and 
hallucinations. Early in April she dreamed one 
night that the King came and stood by her 
bedside. His face was pale and ghastly, and in 
a thrilhng, anguished voice he called upon her 
twice : *' My sister ! my sister ! " Margaret 
awoke in dismay; she rose and forthwith de- 
spatched her messengers to Rochefort, where 
she believed the King to be, and during the 
anxious days of waiting that ensued she with- 
drew from the placid company of the nuns, 
whose peace was a reproach to her feverish 
heart. Day after day, and yet no answer came ; 
day after day, — for, in truth, the King was dead. 

No one dared to tell his sister; they knew 
her passionate affection and feared the stroke. 
But the suspense all but cost the poor Queen 
her reason. A week after her messengers had 
gone, and when the King had been a fortnight 
dead, the same vision appeared to her in sleep. 
This time Margaret awoke almost distracted. 



DEATH OF THE KING. 293 

She sent for her attendants and questioned 
them earnestly, almost fiercely. They did not 
venture to leave her in so frenzied a mood, and 
invented well-meaning lies among themselves, 
assuring her the King was well, was better, 
much better. Only half convinced, Margaret 
rose, and having despatched another messenger, 
passed towards the convent chapel. She was 
still in the cloisters, giving a last direction to 
her secretary, when she heard from a distant 
corner of the cloister a sound of very bitter 
weeping. Margaret, ever compassionate, went 
swiftly to the place, her secretary and some of 
her attendants following her. On the step of 
the cloister sat a poor crazy nun, a harmless, 
gentle creature allowed to roam the convent at 
her w411. She sat there, poor innocent, weep- 
ing so violently that her sobs echoed far and 
wide through the resounding cloister. Mar- 
garet came up to the distracted mourner. 
" What is it, my sister," said the Queen, " that 
you deplore?" At the sound of that gentle 
voice the poor demented girl stopped her 
weeping ; she looked up and said, '' For you, 
Madame ; I weep for you ! " Then, rising 
swiftly to her feet, she covered her face in the 
folds of her veil and fled from the spot. The 
Queen stayed there rigid and still as stone ; 



294 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

she had grown very white. Then, turning to 
her attendants, " God," she said at last, " has 
revealed to me through this poor madwoman 
what you would vainly conceal. The King is 
dead." 

Without tears or more ado she sought her 
chamber, and, kneeling on the floor, dwelt long 
and earnestly in prayer. She sought no human 
help or sympathy; she only entreated to be 
left alone. That prayer should be granted ; 
heaceforth, indeed, the loving, ardent sister 
should be quite alone. 

While Margaret was kneeling on the floor of 
her convent cell, weeping for her loss and pray- 
ing for her dead brother, — her brother pas- 
sionately loved and desperately mourned, — the 
Court of France, with the Dauphin at its head, 
scarcely cared to conceal its rejoicing. The old 
regime ^M2iS quickly buried away. Queen Leonor 
prepared to leave her land of exile, and retired 
to her own familiar home of Brussels. The 
Duchess d'Etampes was disgraced ; the crown- 
diamond which Francis had given her was taken 
from her and given to the triumphant Diana, 
and Anne herself was banished to her husband's 
castle and her husband's revengeful guardian- 
ship. De Tournon and d'Annebaut were dis- 
missed the Court. Montmorency was recalled ; 



DEATH OF THE KING. 295 

favors and honors were heaped upon him. He 
and the Guises were set at the head of affairs. 
The four hundred thousand crowns which 
Francis, despite his magnificence, had saved 
for the good of the State, were swiftly spent 
among the sombre favorites of Henry H. 

"Never recall Montmorency, check the Guises, 
diminish the taxes," the dying King had said. 

Nor was this all. A terrible scene disgraced 
the royal funeral, — a scene noticed by few, 
heard only by the nearest bystanders, but of 
which the reflection and the echo have sur- 
vived until our time. The coffins of the Dau- 
phin and of the young Duke Charles, not yet 
inhumed, were carried in one convoy with the 
King's to the royal vault at St. Denis. Francis 
and the two sons he loved made that last sad 
journey together; and Henry, the new King, 
looking on as the solemn funeral wound along 
the streets before him, watched the procession 
with a significant smile. Pointing to the coffin 
of the Duke of Orleans, he leaned to one of his 
courtiers and asked, *' See you that rascal? He 
opens the vanguard of my felicity." 

So, unregretted, the King's funeral passes 
on. Guise and Diana laugh together, quietly, 
but from the heart. ''He is gone!" they say; 
"the old gallant!" and Henry enters into his 



2g6 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

felicity. Meanwhile, at Tusson, Margaret weeps 
and prays ; and, in Madrid, the Emperor 
surprises the messenger who brings him the 
news by an outburst of grief for the death of 
his captive of yore. " He is gone ! " cries 
Charles, like Guise and Diana; but with how 
different an accent. ^* He is gone, the great 
prince ! I think that Nature will not make his 
like again." Charles takes the loss to heart, 
even as Francis sorrowed for Henry of Eng- 
land. The news leaves him old and lustre- 
less. He has lost his rival and his captive, 
his brother and his noblest adversary. 

Thus Francis rests at St. Denis, between the 
coffins of his sons. His heir makes mei-ry over 
his burial ; and, relates Dandolo, who wrote from 
France that year, ''just so pallid and melancholy 
as he was, does he now seem cheerful and well- 
colored. The young Cardinal de Guise is the 
very heart and spirit of him, and negotiates all 
State affairs with the King." 

So little were the counsels of Francis remem- 
bered. Only his sister mourns and weeps, — 
she alone, and the Emperor who ruined him. 



THE END. 297 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE END. 
t 

The King was dead ; but life still went on full of 
pressing needs and sordid complications. Mar- 
garet's belief had proved fallacious : her brother 
was dead and she was still alive. Nay, rich 
as was the past in dear and solemn memories, 
she had little time to brood on it. Never had 
the present called her with so urgent, vulgar, 
and clamorous a voice. For not only her 
brother was dead, but the King her patron ; 
with him her royal pensions, her influence, 
her authority, died too. And even in the first 
flush of her grief Margaret had to set her 
mind to saving what she could from the 
general disaster. 

The death of her brother left her with scarcely 
sufficient money to cover her yearly expenses ; 
for though her revenues were large, her gener- 
osity was larger. Spending little on herself, — 
very little, as we shall see, — she had always 
chosen to give away the surplus, not to save 



298 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

it. Hitherto there had seemed small need for 
thrift, for Francis had always shared abundantly 
with his Mignonne. Now he was dead, and 
Margaret's expenses were greater than at any 
former time. The young Princess Jeanne, at 
this time a handsome and piquante brunette 
of seventeen, was living at the Court of 
Francis. Fond of splendor and gayety, ex- 
travagant and wilful, she maintained an almost 
royal establishment in Paris. Her mother's 
letters are frequent to M. d'Izernay, the gov- 
ernor of Jeanne's household, and in all of them 
she beseeches him to check the ruining course 
of her thoughtless girl's expenditure ; " for the 
King of Navarre and I do find it insupportable, 
and deem that it is impossible it should con- 
tinue long, since we have not the means to 
defray it; and the said lord has told me that, 
being at Paris, he found the expenses of my 
daughter marvellously great, wherefore I warned 
you of it, as I do again, beseeching you, M. 
d'Izernay, to stay your hand ; for with the ex- 
penses that I have already, I could not find the 
means to support this extra charge." 

Jeanne, however, does not appear to have 
made any retrenchments, for in the ten months 
of the next year her housekeeping absorbed the 
whole of her mother's yearly pension, £2^,000 



THE END. 299 

Tournois (about i^2,iO(J English), without count- 
ing her pin-money (;^3,25o) and the cost of her 
trousseau (^5,213). To the gay, high-spirited, 
charming girl at Court, ambitious, and one of 
the prettiest princesses of her age, the remon- 
strances of her mother appeared ignorant and 
ill-founded. Of course down in Nerac it was 
difficult to understand the necessary expenses 
of a royal princess in Paris. So Jeanne at- 
tempted to persuade her mother, assuring 
Margaret that she could not spare one of the 
officers of her household, for her state was only 
the legitimate splendor of a fille a la suite de la 
cour. 

Meanwhile the very continuance of this pen- 
sion which Jeanne was so amply spending was 
yet undecided. Yet it is characteristic of Mar- 
garet's generous temper that when, at this anx- 
ious moment, Henry offered to liquidate a debt 
of ^4,885 Tournois, which had been lent to his 
father by Margaret and the Duke of Alengon, 
Margaret refused to receive the money, and in- 
sisted that it should be paid to her dead hus- 
band's sisters, the Marchioness of Montferrat 
and the Duchess of Venddme. She was her- 
self in great straits. Pressed by her urgent 
need, she wrote from Pau to M. d'Izernay 
(June 13, 1547): — 



300 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

*' The King of Navarre will leave on Friday, after 
the Feast of St. John, and take his daughter back to 
Court with him ; and I shall go to Mont de Marsan, 
and keep house so thriftily that every one will stare. 
It is not necessary that you should take the trouble to 
come to me just yet, for reasons that I will tell you so 
soon as I am there ; and also because you do me a 
much greater service in soliciting my affairs at Court ; 
of which the greatest is the assurance of my ;^2 5,000 
Tournois ; for, as you know, without them it would be 
impossible for me to maintain my state, and I have no 
more in reserve than will pay this year's expenses ; and 
one may well believe it is not my custom, without sore 
necessity, to ask any favor. And if I had father, mother, 
brother, uncle, or kinsman, I would pray them to be 
my advocates. But since it has pleased the King 
(Henry II.) to promise to be all these things to me, 
it will not in any wise vex him that I demand his aid ; 
for without his grace and goodness I could not live at 
all, having in this world no other wealth than that 
which the King (Francis I.) and he have given me ; 
and I have always been as content therewith as if 
I had had a great share of the revenues of my 
House." 

Henry confirmed the pension, and asked 
Margaret to stand sponsor to his nev^-born 
child, treating her with a kindness and regard 
that would go far to endear his memory did we 
not suspect an aim in reserve, an object which 



THE END. 301 

made it worth his while to concihate. Margaret 
suspected nothing. She was profoundly touched 
by his goodness, and by a friendly and magnani- 
mous letter which Constable De Montmorency 
had the fine tact to send her on his reinstate- 
ment in power. That Montmorency should be 
the advocate of the Queen of Navarre, who had 
been the instrument of his fall, was indeed a 
heaping of coals of fire upon her head. She 
scarcely knew how sufficiently to confess her 
humility. She wrote : — 

My Nephew, — You will not find it strange if inces- 
santly I thank you as you incessantly give me occasion, 
for by the message this porter has brought me I see 
clearly that time has had no victory over your remem- 
brance, to be able to eiface the affection that since your 
childhood I have borne you ; and the like I pray you 
to continue until the end of your old mother, and be 
you to her the staff of her age, as she was the rod of 
youth to you. For you have had many friends ; but 
remember, you have had but one mother, who will 
never lose this name or character in all that she may 
do or desire for you or yours. 

So Margaret wrote to Montmorency, grate- 
fully smiling through her tears, and wrote to 
Henry that he is the *' life, health, and repose 
of her spirit." Meanwhile Montmorency, under 



302 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

Henry's orders, was opening all the letters and 
packets addressed to the Queen and King of 
Navarre, in search of complaint, or 'a treason- 
able plan to frustrate the King's arrangement 
for their daughter's marriage. 

Henry had inherited his father's fears lest the 
King of Navarre should marry his only daughter 
to the heir of Spain. It seemed so natural a 
match, and one that would set so old a feud at 
rest, that the King of France did not feel him- 
self secure till Jeanne of Navarre was given to a 
husband of his choice. France, not Spain, must 
acquire Navarre ; it was too dangerous an out- 
post to yield to the enemy. Therefore little 
Jeanne had been taken away from her father 
and mother and brought up as a French prin- 
cess ; therefore she had been married, against 
her will, to the Duke of Cleves. Since that mar- 
riage had been dissolved the old peril was nearer 
than before. Her gayety and spirit gave a great 
charm to this girl, known in Paris as the Dar- 
ling of Kings, and her father had always ardently 
desired the Spanish match. Henry determined 
to marry Jeanne at once. 

The husband that he chose for her was rich, 
noble, the son of her mother's dearest friend, 
Fran^oise d'Alengon. Antoine de Bourbon, 
the Duke of Vendome, held the first rank in 



THE END. 303 

France, after the King's children. If he were 
suspected of Lutheran tendencies, that was but 
another passport to the favor of the Queen of 
Navarre. In choosing him for Jeanne, Henry 
had done well by his little niece, with her 
dowry of a poverty-stricken and confiscated 
kingdom. Yet Margaret passionately opposed 
the match. Both she and her husband so 
disliked the mere thought of it, that we are 
tempted to believe they had really set their 
hearts on Philip of Spain for their son-in-law. 
Henry of France certainly believed this, and 
he was strenuous in urging on the Bourbon 
marriage. 

Meanwhile the King of Navarre, too weak to 
openly oppose the plan, impotently tried to 
shuffle out of it. His nephew sent for him 
to Paris, but first he was detained at Pau by 
the affairs of Madame de Laval. Then he was 
ill, with a long intermittent illness which forced 
him to stay at home. Nobody believed much 
in these excuses, and at last the King of 
France got hold of his shuffling and irreso- 
lute opposer. Then the affair was quickly 
decided. The French King wrote to Mont- 
morency in letters that have something of 
the expression of his face after youth, — some- 
thing embittered, discordant, and cynical : — 



304 MARGARET OF ANGOULEIME. 

" I have got quit of him [the King of Navarre] 
cheaper than I thought. I grant him only 15,000 
francs a year for the government of his kingdom. 
That is less than I offered him by Monge ; for, 
if you remember, I had offered him ten thousand 
crowns. ... It is true there is no love lost between 
my good aunt and her husband, — never any couple 
were less united ; and she already far from loves her 
son-in-law. The King of Navarre will swear by noth- 
ing but the allegiance that he owes me, and I trust his 
protestations just as much as I ought. . . . They are 
very poor. I don't believe that altogether they have 
ten gentlemen-in-waiting. The King has besought me 
to appoint him a lieutenant ; I said I would think of it. 
It seems to me this is a very different thing from de- 
termining to choose one himself, as he used to declare. 
. . . There is no further need that you should open 
the packets addressed to the King and Queen of 
Navarre. After all, there is nothing to make it 
worth your while. The King of Navarre told me 
he knew very well that his wife was the cause of 
his not receiving all his packets." 

In these letters and fragments of letters we 
perceive the lessened authorit}^ of Margaret and 
her husband. Their opposition was not likely, 
now, to frustrate any plan of the King. 

Meanwhile Jeanne was brilliantly happy. 
She had so little affection for her mother that 
Margaret's sorrow touched her not at all. She 



THE END. 305 

had made a brilliant marriage, and had made 
it in France, with a man of her own language 
and her own manners, — these had ever been 
the chief of her ambition. Antoine de Bourbon 
was vacillating, uncertain, timid; but he was 
better than the Duke of Cleves. He was rich, 
amiable, of the highest rank. Jeanne set about 
the pleasant extravagances of her trousseau with 
a merry heart. '* I never saw so happy a bride," 
said Henry H. to Montmorency. 

Meanwhile Margaret continued her unac- 
countable opposition. She was deeply attached 
to Jeanne, but her daughter's happiness did not 
change her. Perhaps she foresaw how little 
fitted was the vacillating and fickle temper of 
Vendome to guide her daughter's headstrong, 
courageous nature ; more likely the long de- 
pression which took possession of her on her 
brother's death rendered her incapable of pleas- 
ure. It was sorely against her will that she 
joined the French Court at Lyons, proceeding 
thence to Moulins, where, on the 20th of Octo- 
ber, 1548, Jeanne d'Albret, the future mother 
of Henry IV., was married. 

The festival, though not so fine as that which 

graced the unlucky nuptials of the Duke of 

Cleves, was still a splendid sight, celebrated 

avec toiite esphe de festins, joyeiisetes et pompes 

I V 20 



3o6 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

royales. The King of France was present. The 
Duke . of Vendome — though at the last think- 
ing with disrehsh of Jeanne's earHer bridal — 
showed himself a generous lover, and settled 
;^ioo,ooo Tournois upon the bride. Jeanne 
was as merry as her marriage-bells. Yet Mar- 
garet persisted in her displeasure, and only at 
her nephew's express command would affix her 
signature to the marriage-contract. 

The King of Navarre sullenly content to be 
outwitted at so good a price; Margaret miser- 
able, dejected, angry with her husband, and lav- 
ishing unanswered love upon her girl ; Jeanne 
thoughtless, delighted, accepting with laughter 
the good gifts of Fortune, and blind to the dis- 
appointment and vexed ambitions that sur- 
rounded her, — this is the family portrait that 
we find in the letters of Henry II. He wrote to 
Montmorency : — 

" I never saw so joyous a bride ; she never does 
anything but laugh. I have heard that the King of 
Navarre intends to go to Nevers, taking his daughter. 
I have not determined to refuse them the permission, 
for it seems to me that, having married their daughter, 
I have the best hostage they can give. He pre- 
tends to be the best-contented father in the world — 
you know the man ! But from all I can learn from 
him, and from many others, now that his daughter is 



THE END. 307 

really married he thinks of nothing but amassing a 
large fortune and making good cheer. . . . The Queen 
of Navarre is at daggers drawn with her husband, 
through her love for her daughter, who, for her part, 
makes no account of her mother. You never saw any 
one cry, so much as my aunt when she went away, and 
if it had not been for me, she would never have gone 
back with her husband." 



It is difficult to account for these tears. In 
Margaret's nature ambition was scarcely so emi- 
nent a factor that she should break her heart over 
what, after all, was a fair match for her daugh- 
ter. The estates of Beam had long ago pleaded 
that their princess should marry no stranger, 
but rather some great French noble who would 
strengthen her hands at home; so that this 
marriage pleased the King of France, the bride 
herself, and the subjects of the bride. There 
was nothing personally to object to in Antoine 
de Bourbon; he was chivalrous and gentle, 
though weak in disposition. In fact, there was 
no cause, no reason for Margaret's grief. The 
string strained too tight had broken, that was 
all. A constitutional melancholy, sharply ac- 
cented by her brother's death, grew stronger 
and stronger on her day by day, blotting all the 
world from her in a thick haze of cloud and 



308 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

misery, till it ended, even as did the melancholy 
of Francis, in lethargy and death. 

Margaret had gone to Fontainebleau, but she 
found little comfort there in the Court of Diana, 
where everything reminded her of the buried 
past. She returned to Pau for Christmas with 
her husband, and thence, for her health's sake, 
she went to Mont de Marsan. She was getting 
very weak ; a religious misery took hold of her. 
She did not share her husband's pleasure in 
wealth and good cheer. She lived very quietly 
and simply, spending much of her time in that 
convent of Tusson where she had learned her 
brother's death. But now, in any place, it was 
a nun's life that she led. We find her expenses 
for the year 1548 entered in her account-book; 
exclusive of pensions, loans, and donations to 
the poor, they do but reach the sum of ;^220 
Tournois : — 

For pins, nine livres, 15 sols. 

Six wooden combs, each 3 s. 6 d. 

For gold and silver for her needlework, Three marks. 

For a gold chain to be given away, £17 S- 

For the deed of a loan to M. de Rohan, £4.. 

For New Year's gifts to the King of Navarre, £30,. 

That is the slender amount. Margaret had 
done with the world and with worldly gear. 
She had a lodging built for her in the convent 



THE END. 309 

at Tusson, and went there in 1549 to spend her 
Lent in retreat; but the hfe suited her so well, 
she stayed the summer there. Her leaning 
towards reform was no obstacle in her love 
for this conventual routine. It was because she 
loved the Church that she had wished to chasten 
it. She had no desire, as we have said, to estab- 
lish a sect outside the Roman pale, only to keep 
a spirit of national life in the Church of France, 
— to keep it French, while admitting the author- 
ity of Rome. So Margaret lived in peace of con- 
science at Tusson ; not, alas ! in peace of mind. 
Her growing weakness sorely distressed her; 
and when her physicians told her that the end 
was near, she wept, and found their saying a 
ver}^ bitter word. Her attendants reminded her 
of the glory of the saints in Paradise. The 
Queen was not consoled. 

" All that is true ! " she said, " but we stay so 
long a time under the earth before our coming 
there ! " And then she began to weep and ask 
why must she die ; she was not yet so old but 
that she might well live a few years more. 
They could not appease her horror of death, 
her curiosity concerning the fate of the soul. 
One of the dearest of her maids of honor falling 
ill and lying near to death, Margaret persisted 
in sitting by her bed. Knowing the disgust for 



3IO MARGARET OF ANGOULEME, 

mortality which she had inherited from her 
mother, her maidens begged the Queen to let 
them lead her away; her presence could not 
save the poor dying girl. But it was not affec- 
tion that made the reluctant Queen vanquish 
her instinctive horror; that kept her sitting by 
the bed, silent, motionless, looking at the face 
of the sufferer so fixedly, so strangely, that her 
women marvelled among themselves. At last, 
when all was over, one ventured to ask the 
meaning of that look. Then Margaret told 
them she had heard from learned doctors how 
at the actual moment of dissolution the spirit 
leaves the body, and she had looked for the 
soul and listened to catch the faintest sound or 
rustle. And she said these learned men had 
told her how the swan sings itself to death for 
love of the soul that travaileth up its long throat 
towards the issue. To catch this issuing soul 
she had narrowly watched the lips of the dying 
girl ; but she had seen nothing, heard nothing, 
felt nothing. 

" And were I not firm in my faith," she said, 
" I should not know what to think of this dis- 
lodging and departing of the soul." Then she 
went back to her weeping and her praying, 
shuddering at the mystery of death, striving 
to see beyond the visible, evident grave, the 



THE END. 311 

distant Paradise. '^ But ah ! we stay so long 
under the earth before our coming there ! " 

The summer dragged away, and every month 
left Margaret weaker. With the autumn she 
moved to Odos, a castle near the city of Tarbes. 
Here sprang wells of mineral water, said to cure 
diseases of the chest. Margaret drank them, 
but they did not dispel her languor. She grew 
weaker and weaker. Her melancholy deepened 
into apathy. She fell into a drowsiness from 
which her physicians could not rouse her. The 
heart, so hungry for emotions, the eager intel- 
lect, the generous sympathies, the poignant 
vitality of her nature, — all these slept a deep 
slumber now; but through her stupor she 
dreamily wondered on the nature and fate of 
spirits. That was her preoccupation. 

One night she dreamed that a very beautiful 
woman approached her bed, bearing in her 
hands a wreath of flowers, — flowers of every 
sort that blow, — and these, the angel said, were 
freshly gathered for Margaret to wear in Para- 
dise. The Queen woke a little consoled." She 
had always put her trust in signs and visions. 
On the faith of a dream she could believe in 
Paradise. 

A few days after this a great comet was seen 
in the sky at night. The rumor went that it 



312 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

appeared for the death of Paul III. the Pope. 
Margaret, who had heard this tale, stood on an 
open balcony, looking at the blazing heaven 
with the wintry stars in it, and the meteor flung 
across the blue. Standing there she must have 
remembered that other and more brilliant comet 
which appeared before her mother's death at 
Grez-en-Gatinois. Margaret was ever super- 
stitious. Suddenly her mouth was drawn a 
little awry. Her physician, seeing this, per- 
suaded her to go indoors, and to bed. He lost 
no time in treating her; but the December 
night had chilled her through ; the spectacle 
of the comet had taken her courage away, and 
she felt persuaded she would die. The chill 
settled on her delicate lungs, and for three days 
she could not speak ; but a few moments before 
the last she found her voice again. She caught 
at a cross which lay upon the bed, and, crying 
three times, '* Jesus ! Jesus ! Jesus ! " in her 
stifled voice, she died. The story of De Re- 
mond that she died a Catholic, declaring that 
she had helped the oppressed Reformers rather 
from compassion than conviction, has been re- 
ceived with great distrust and anger by the 
Lutheran historians, from the earliest chroni- 
clers to Miss Freer. It seems to me no truer 
words could resume the character of Margaret, 



THE END. 313 

— compassion, not conviction. It is at once the 
rarest value and the hmitation of her nature. 
Hence her sweet, large-hearted mercy, under- 
standing and forgiving all men. Hence, also, 
her weakness, her lack of a firm standpoint, her 
hesitations and indecisions. Hence that signal 
bane of her influence over Francis, '' the flux 
and reflux of uncertain authority," as Gaillard 
has turned the phrase. 

Margaret of Angouleme died at the Castle 
of Odos, December 21, 1549, at the age of 
fifty-seven. Her reign was over. She who 
had been for a lifetime the influence and ideal 
of the most civilized court in Europe was no 
more. In all but sheer existence she had died 
two years ago, when her brother breathed his 
last at Rambouillet. A different ideal was now 
set up in her place, a different influence swayed 
the heart of the King of France, — a woman 
two years older than herself, whom some magic, 
as it seemed, preserved from age. The orb of 
Diana filled the earth with its pale, cold, roman- 
tic, and illusive light. The moon had arisen, 
and reigned over an altered world ; a world 
without color, at once vague and hard, all 
black and white ; a world of superstition, of 
phantasmal ghosts and fears ; a world of en- 
chantment, a new Armidas garden, where the 



314 MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. 

young adore the old, where a courtesan is hon- 
ored as widowed Fidelity, where Probity is 
avaricious, treacherous, and a bigot; a moonlit 
world, where the false and the true are equally 
shadows, — the world of Diana and of Mont- 
morency. 

It was best that Margaret should die. She 
had no place in the new order of things ; she 
could neither change them nor sympathize with 
them. Her sun had set, and the moonlight 
dazzled her. She, poor sunflower, could not 
live without the sun. '' Mourut par trop aymer 
d'amour grande et nai'fve." 

Margaret was buried in the cathedral at Les- 
car, the last resting-place of the House of 
Navarre. It was observed that Montmorency 
sent no representative to the crowded funeral. 
But the poor of all the States of Beam congre- 
gated round the solemn procession, and through 
all the world the men of learning and the poets 
poured out in rhyme and epitaph their sorrow 
for her loss. They, indeed, would feel her 
death as the sudden rattling down of a buckler 
that had ever been held between them and their 
enemies. With more truth than befits an epi- 
taph, Olhagaray declared, "All the learned, 
weary of living, succumbed at that blow." The 
Queen who had saved Roussel and Lefebvre, 



THE END. 315 

Calvin, Farel, and Clement Marot, . the protec- 
tress of Erasmus and Melanchthon, the learned 
muse who inspired the King to found the Col- 
lege of France, la Marguerite des MargueriteSy 
merited so fine a commendation. 

Henry of Navarre mourned his wife's death, 
notwithstanding all their jealousies and quar- 
rels. Without her, his petulant and vacillating 
character was as a ship without ballast. Day 
by day he became more feeble and variable, 
changing his mind from moment to moment, till 
finally the reins of government were handed 
over to Jeanne and her husband, who ruled the 
country well. 

So Margaret passed out of life : others took 
up her tasks and filled her place; but her 
humane and gentle influence was gone forever. 
In the brief and violent history of the house of 
Valois no other Egeria shines. 

She is dead, and all her works are dead, or 
only live a little dimly on the shelves of histo- 
rians and bibliophiles. But oblivion will never 
cover her memory; rather, as the sphere of 
history widens, will the appreciation of her rare 
influence increase. Without her, the noblest 
part of the Renaissance in France must have 
perished at the Inquisition stakes. She made 
learning possible, and secured for a time a rela- 



3l6 MARGARET OF ANGOUL^ME. 

tive freedom of thought. She taught respect 
for hfe in an age which only respected opinions. 
Her strong national feehng was for years a bul- 
wark against the invasion of Spanish supersti- 
tion. She showed that compassion is larger 
than conviction ; charity more honorable than 
faith. Her character was not great: it lacked 
decision, strength, moral judgment, and the 
splendor of mental purity; but her impassioned 
sweetness made it beautiful and rare. Her 
mercy and magnanimity were the saving of a 
nation. For this, and not for her novels or her 
poems, she will be remembered. 



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fascinating woman whom Miss Blind presents," says the New York 
Trihiiie. 

" Miss Blind's little biographical study of George Eliot is written with 
sympathy and good taste, and is very welcome. It gives us a graphic if no(; 
elaborate sketch of the personality and development of the great novelist, is 
particularly full and authentic concerning her earlier years, tells enough of 
the leading motives in her work to give the general reader a lucid idea of the 
true drift and purpose of her art, and analyzes carefully her various writings, 
with no attempt at profound criticism or fine writing, but with appreciation, 
insight, and a clear grasp of those underlying psychological principles which 
are so closely interwoven in every production that came from her pen." — 
Traveller. 

" The lives of few great writers have attracted more curiosity and specula- 
tion than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier in the century 
she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the 
anecdotes, commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, 
therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the true story of her career to 
the lowest terms, and this service has been well done by the author of the 
present volume." — Philadelphia Press. 



Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
price, by the publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



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